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THE UNIVERSITY 
GF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


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PROTECTION OR FREE- TRADE. 


An Examination of the Tariff Question with Especial 
Regard to the Interests of Labor. 


LY: 


ee Vine 


XVI. 


By HENRY GHORGE. 


12mo0, Cloth. Price, $1.50. 


CONTENTS: 


. Introductory. 

. Clearing ground. 

. Of method. 

. Protection as a universal 


need. 


. The protective unit. 
. Trade. 
. Production and _ produ- 


cers. 


. Tariffs for revenue. 
. Tariffs for protection. 
. The encouragement of 


industry. 


. The home market and 


home trade. 


. Exports and imports. 
XIII. 


Confusions arising from 
the use of money. 

Do high wages necessi- 
tate protection ? 

Of advantages and dis- 
advantages as reasons 
for protection. 

The development of man- 
ufactures, 


(1) 


XVII. 


XVIII. 


XIX. 


XX. 


XXI. 


XXII. 


XXIII. 


XXIV. 
XXV. 


XXXVI. 
XXVIII. 
XXVIII. 


XXIX, 
XXX. 


Protection and produ- 
cers. 
Effect of protection 


on American in- 
dustry. 

Protection and 
wages. 


The abolition of pro- 
tection. 

Inadequacy of the 
free trade argu- 
ment. 

The real weakness of 
free trade. 

The real strength of 
protection. 

The paradox. 

The robber that takes 
all that is left. 

True free trade. 

The lion in the path. 

Free trade and social- 
ism. 

Practical politics. 

Conclusion, 


EXTRACT FROM PREFACE. 


By carrying the inquiry beyond the point where Adam Smith 
and the writers who have followed him have stopped, I believe 
I have stripped .the vexed tariff question of its greatest difficul- 
ties, and have cleared the way for the settlement of a dispute 
which otherwise might go on interminably. The conclusions 
thus reached raise the doctrine of free trade from the emascu- 
lated form in which it has been taught by the English economists 
to the fullness in which it was held by the predecessors of Adam 
Smith, those illustrious Frenchmen, with whom originated the 
motto Laissez faire, and who, whatever may have been the con- 
fusions of their terminology or the faults of their method, 
grasped a central truth which free traders since their time have 
ignored. 

My effort, in short, has been to make such a candid and 
thorough examination of the tariff question, in all its phases, as 
would aid men to whom the subject is now a perplexing maze to 
reach clear and firm conclusions. In this I trust I have done 
something to inspire a movement now faint-hearted with the 
earnestness and strength of radical conviction, to prevent the 
division into hostile camps of those whom a common purpose 
ought to unite, to give to efforts for the emancipation of labor 
greater definiteness of purpose, and to eradicate that belief in 
the opposition of national interests which leads peoples, even of 
the same blood and tongue, to regard each other as natural 
antagonists. 


PRESS “NOTICES: 


‘*An argument of great ingenuity and power, logically worked out and 
attractively formulated.’— Chicago Times. 


‘“ Whatever may be Henry George’s defects as an author, he never writes a 
dull book.’’—Home Weekly. 


‘* Another great book, written in that clear, eloquent, analytical style that 
made fame for * Progress and Poverty.’ The most thorough investigation of 
the subject that has yet been put into type.’’-—W. Y. News. 


‘‘The appearance of this book marks a new epoch in the world-wide 
struggle for Free Trade. For the first time this great question is fully dis- 
cussed by one whose whole sympathies are well known to be with the laborin 
classes, and who has in a special manner won their confidence. They wi 
listen to him, and he can make himself clear to them. Henry George hasa 
power of putting economic truths in such clear and limpid language thata 
child can understand him, while the most learned man can enjoy the accuracy 
of his statements and the suggestiveness of his thoughts. 4 

‘This book is in itself a complete refutation of the often expressed belief 
that the Tariff Question is so profound and complicated that no one can hope 


(2) 


to understand it without a special technical education; for the whole subject 
is covered in these few pages so thoroughly, thut all the masses of statistics 
which may be found elsewhere ure but illustrations of the principle here 
stated; and itis made so simple that any woman, no matter how unfamiliar 
with business, can understand every page, and any boy of fifteen ought to be 
ashamed if he does not find the book both intelligible and interesting, while 
the argument is so logical and so conclusive that the most scientific scholar 
cannot fail to enjoy it, and would find it difficult to improve its precision 
without diminishing its force. 

“Its argument on the main question is simply unanswerable, and it is 
stated so clearly, so calmly, and so dispassionately, that none but those whose 
minds are sealed against all reason on this subject can fail to be convinced 
by it ; and many, even of these, will find an unusual intellectual enjoyment 
in reading a book so admirably written, in English of the purest water, fitted 
equally for the refreshment of the wise and the instruction of the igno- 
rant.’’—THoMAs G. SHEARMAN, in New York Star. 


‘* Written with a clearness, a vigor, and a terseness that at once attract.” 
—Philadelphia Record. 


‘*Mr. George is a wonderfully clear thinker and logical reasoner, and 
invests his subject with a halo of interest which holds the reader to the close. 
The charming style in which the book is written is one of its best features. 
It is English pure and undefiled.’’—Jacksonville (Fla.) Times. 


“‘The strongest argument for free trade ever yet made. Everyone who 
wants to get a clearer view on the tariff question should read this book, and, 
whether he becomes a free trader or not, he will know more of political 
economy than ever before.’’— Omaha Republican. 


‘*This book will be a classic. Never was such close argument, such clear 
deductions put between covers.’’—Burlington (Ia.) Post. 


‘‘ The singular success of Mr. George is that he has made political economy 
interesting. No writer has approached him in the power of clothing its dry 
bones with life. Those who deny him the title of a social architect cannot 
refuse him the claim of being an economic artist. 

“** Protection or Free Trade’ takes a grip of the reader such as ‘ Progress 
and Poverty ’ laid upon hosts of men in all walks of life. Those of us who 
knew Mr. George had been for a Sar or more engaged upon a book upon this 
well-handled theme have awaited its appearance with curious wonder, to see 
whether this threshed-out subject could take on new life at his touch. The 
miracle is wrought. He has written a book which, whether it convinces the 
reader or not, cannot fail to interest him and allure him on through its pages 
with a zest that never flags from title page to /finis. f 

‘*He is a master of words, because he is a master of ideas. He thinks 
clearly, and thus speaks clearly. He knows what he means, sees the thought 
clearly in sunshine, and puts it on paper so that he who runs mayread. He 
goes straight for a point he hasin view and strides along in a good, honest 

axon gait which leaves it easy for the plainest man of the people to keep in 
his footsteps. . : 

‘One of his striking powers is that of lighting up an argument with an 
illustration. His images are, as Mr. Beecher calls them, ‘ windows.’ Another 
of the striking features of this work is the complete absence of those elabo- 
rate tables of statistics which we had come to regard as quite as essential to 
the making up of a work on the tariff as a cover. Those of us—and our 
name is legion —-who always flunked in figures have come well-nigh to despair 
of mastering a subject which, we had thus been taught, is and was, and ever 
should be, a labyrinth of statistics. What then is our soul’s delight to find a 
book on the tariff which neither in the text. nor in foot notes, nor yet even in 
appendices, marshals the dreadful line of figures from which we always ran 


ay . ; 
‘“*This book reads easily, very largely because of that which enables it to 


dispense with statistics,—its Eraep of a great principle, and its lucid applica- 
tion of that principle to the problem in hand. The argument moves with the 


(8) 


Maxx for thyself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to thee, 
so asto see distinctly what kind of a thing it is, in its substance, in its nudity, in its 
complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which 
it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so product- 
ive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object 
which is presented to thee in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same 
time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, 
and what value everything has with reference to the whole, and what with reference to 
man, who is a citizen of the highest city, of which all other cities are like families ; what 
each thing is, and of what it is composed, and how long it is the nature of this thing to 
endure.— Marcus Aurelius Antoninue. 


PROGRESS AND POVERTY: * 


AN INQUIRY INTO THE 


CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL 


INCREASE OF WANT WITH INCREASE OF WEALTH. 


THE REMEDY. 


BY 


HENRY GEORGH. 


NEW YORK: 
HENRY GEORGE AND COMPANY, 
16 ASTOR PLACE, 
1887. 
el 


There must be refuge! Men 
Perished in winter winds till one smote fire 
From flint stones coldly hiding what they held, 
The red spark treasured from the kindling sun; 
They gorged on flesh like wolves, till one sowed corn, 
Which grew a weed, yet makes the life of man; 
They mowed and babbled till some tongue struck speech, 
And patient fingers framed the lettered sound. 
What good gift have my brothers, but it came 
From search and strife and loving sacrifice? 

Edwin Arnold. 


Never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set 
In the world’s wide fallow; 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After hands, from hill and mead, 
Reap the harvests yellow. 
Whittier. 


PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Tue views herein set forth were in the main briefly stated in a 
pamphlet entitled “ Our Land and Land Policy,” published in San 
Francisco in 1871. I then intended, as soon as I could, to present 
them more fully, but the opportunity did not for a long time occur. 
In the mean while I became even more firmly convinced of their 
truth, and saw more completely and clearly their relations; and I 
also saw how many false ideas and erroneous habits of thought 
stood in the way of their recognition, and how necessary it was to 
go over the whole ground. 

This I have here tried to do, as thoroughly as space would permit. 
It has been necessary for me to clear away before I could build up, 
and to write at once for those who have made no previous study of 
such subjects, and for those who are familiar with economic reason- 
ings; and, so great is the scope of the argument that it has been 
impossible to treat with the fullness they deserve many of the ques- 
tions raised. What I have most endeavored to do is to establish gen- 
eral principles, trusting to my readers to carry further their applica- 
tions where this is needed. 

In certain respects this book will be best appreciated by those 
who have some knowledge of economic literature ; but no previous 
reading is necessary to the understanding of the argument or the 
passing of judgment upon its conclusions. The facts upon which I 
have relied are not facts which can only be verified by a search 
through libraries. They are facts of common observation and com- 
mon knowledge, which every reader can verify for himself, just as 
he can decide whether the reasoning from them is or is not valid. 

Beginning with a brief statement of facts which suggest this in- 
quiry, I proceed to examine the explanation currently given in the 
name of PU economy of the reason why, in spite of the in- 


x PREFACE, 


private property in land always has, and always must, as develop- 
ment proceeds, lead to the enslavement of the laboring class; that 
land-owners can make no just claim to compensation if society choose 
to resume its right; that so far from private property in land being 
in accordance with the natural perceptions of men, the very reverse 
is true, and that in the United States we are already beginning to 
feel the effects’of having admitted this erroneous and destructive 
principle. 

The inquiry then passes to the field of practical statesmanship. 
It is seen that private property in land, instead of being necessary 
to its improvement and use, stands in the way of improvement and 
use, and entails an enormous waste of productive forces; that the 
recognition of the common right to land involves no shock or dis- 
possession, but is to be reached by the simple and easy method of 
abolishing all taxation save that upon land-values. And this an 
inquiry into the principles of taxation shows to be, in all respects, 
the best subject of taxation. 

A consideration of the effects of the change proposed then shows 
that it would enormously increase production ; would secure justice 
in distribution; would benefit all classes; and would make possible 
an advance to a higher and nobler civilization. 

The inquiry now rises to a wider field, and recommences from 
another starting-point. For not only do the hopes which have been 
raised come into collision with the widespread idea that social prog- 
ress is only possible by slow race improvement, but the conclusions 
we have arrived at assert certain laws which, if they are really nat- 
ural laws, must be manifest in universal history. As a final test, it 
therefore becomes necessary to work out the law of human progress, 
for certain great facts which force themselves on our attention as 
soon as we begin to consider this subject, seem utterly inconsistent 
with what is now the current theory. This inquiry shows that dif- 
ferences in civilization are not due to differences in individuals, but 
rather to differences in social organization; that progress, always 
kindled by association, always passes into retrogression as inequality 
is developed; and that even now, in modern civilization, the causes 
which have destroyed all previous civilizations are beginning to 
manifest themselves, and that mere political democracy is running 
its course toward anarchy and despotism. But it also identifies the 
law of social life with the great moral law of justice, and, proving 
previous conclusions, shows how retrogression may be prevented 
and a grander advance begun. This ends the inquiry. The final 
chapter will explain itself, 


PREFACE. xl 


The great importance of this inquiry will be obvious. If it has 
been carefully and logically pursued, its conclusions completely 
change the character of political economy, give it the coherence and 
certitude of a true science, and bring it into full sympathy with the 
aspirations of the masses of men, from which it has long been es- 
tranged. What I have done in this book, if I have correctly solved 
the great problem I have sought to investigate, is, to unite the truth 
perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the truth perceived 
by the school of Proudhon and Lasalle; to show that laissez faire (in 
its full true meaning) opens the way to a realization of the noble 
dreams of socialism ; to identify social law with moral law, and to 
disprove ideas which in the minds of many cloud grand and elevat- 
ing perceptions. 

This work was written between August, 1877, and March, 1879, 
and the plates finished by September of that year. Since that time 
new illustrations have been given of the correctness of the views 
herein advanced, and the march of events—and especially that great 
movement which has begun in Great Britain in the Irish land 
agitation—shows still more clearly the pressing nature of the prob- 
lem I have endeavored to solve. But there has been nothing in the 
criticisms they have received to induce the change or modification 
of these views—in fact, I have yet to see an objection not answered 
in advance in the book itself. And except that some verbal errors 
have been corrected and a preface added, this edition is the same 
as previous ones. 

Henry GEORGE. 

New York, Wovember, 1880. 


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CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
INTRODUCTORY. 
PUGSE TORIC wy evias dutaneuee cece cgus ere cen e's Wisaunsresedesdoctess eed uieseperess =o 
Book I—WaGEs AND CAPITAL. 
Chapter I—The current doctrine—its insufficiency...... BEE SE rics erin Spiopodo lie 
II—The meaning of the terms...... aetcety ois cttriciecie as erates versie ates Soccmmccte: WA 
Ill-—Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor......... Coa 
IV—The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital..............2.. 63 
V—The real functions of capital.......0..csseecces Desicle ersigieteis tits sockuonGe (fa! 
Book II—PopuuLaTION AND SUBSISTENCE. 
Chapter I—The Malthusian theory—its genesis and support......cssescecesscese Sl 
TU—-Inferences from Iacbeem s oaenioee oes alee odes severe civicien oft we vee me Ameo We 
I1I—Inferences from analogy..... Seidinmicdcarisne ea claractese eats Ste lero\s eieicretetrele 115 
IV—Disproof of the Malthusian theory.............008 alere's's sterate als SaQ0NBC 125 


Book IIlI—Tue Laws oF DISTRIBUTION. 


Yhapter I—The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution—necessary relation 


OLAGHESOUAWS stains crocs sieve sie cre letieicrarecalelsreee es oe SpOaHC ra aca gene LOD 

Liz eOt ANAS la WOOL TONG. civicwanacscv sar act sev sascmspevss ses Aon ese! 
1iI=Interestiand the-cause of interest. acsccesc ces csi se asic cncesee een 155 
IV—Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest......... 170 
N-=The law of inberest acces welsisre ctedie's cn cists cists caicaies 6 ele sratetacdta terse aislers 176 
Vig Wares and the lawiOlawases er. catciteceion + sioctee eirecloiertine ole iaaio rie. els ocr 184 
ViI—Correlation and co-ordination of these laws....... ABU GOOD GSOOCTOONC . 196 
VilI—The statics of the problem thus explained............... ADAG SeOr noc alte 


Book I[V—EFFEeEcr OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 


Chapter I—The dynamics of the problem yet to seek..........ecec ee eeeeees Apo 70s) 
II—Effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth....... 207 
III—Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth.... 220 
IV—Effect of the expectation raised by material progress........ssesecee. 230 


Book V—THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 
Chapter I—The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression, .. 237 
II—The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth........... cocccces 20% 


Book VI—Tusk REMEDY, 


Chapter I—Insufficiency of remedies currently advocated. ..,...+s0ceeeesceeeeess 269 
II—The true remedy. .... escveceswensé erERERERE PERE ee ee eee ee ee 294 


X1V CONTENTS. 


PAGE 
Book VII-—Justice or THE REMEDY. 
Chapter I—Injustice of private property in land................. aisieieteie's cis elsie eat 299 
II—Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land. 312 
III—Claim of land owners to compensation. .........0...csceecccecsccces . 322 
1V—Property inland historically considered .\.,. ... «« «saisisieless olsis/ecisleicielee ole 331 
V—Property in land in the United States........ccccscsese eccscsvececs 346 
Book VIII—APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. 
Chapter I—Private property in land inconsistent with the best use of land..... «. 357 
II—How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured........... 362 
I1I1—The proposition tried by the canons of taxation.............-2..e00. . 367 
TV-——Indorsements.and objections #012... ..<dasensessueaedsanes cess ve cene 379 
Boox IX—EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. 

Chapter I—Of the effect upon the production of wealth.............sse+eseceeces 389 
II—Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon production.......... 395 
1_I—Of the effect upon individuals and classes...........0.s.sceeeseseeees 402 

IVY—Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization and social 
Life yeast cate sietrieieinee cere ins siete Sia ate elders ayeoreree nore pietrinte ciiere 408 

Book X—TuHE LAw oF HuMAN PROGRESS. 

Chapter I—The current theory of human progress-—its insufficiency............ en Aa 
II—Differences.in civilization—to what due.................--2s-scsccee 440 
ITI—The law of wma PLOCLESS oie a tft wie) olaletay clots afelsieler ete etcletet eters otetaieie = 455 
LV-—How modern civilization Day GCClIM versie ere -laeiote sleistels eciatee siaeanneieltr = 474 
V—tThe central truth............ soho orelelere eros steretra es iremisrarsiore ettiniererasis «e.- 489 


CONCLUSION. 


The problem of individual life.......cesseeeseeseeeees cocccccccsce. cesses ceererce 499 


INTRODUCTORY. 


THE PROBLEM. 


Ye build ! yc build! but ye enter not in, 
Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin; 
From the land of promise ye fade and die, 
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your wearied eye. 
—Mrs Sigourney. 


iN Oost Caras Yes 


eH Rea ©? Bal Hite 


The present century has been marked by a prodigious 
increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of 
steam and electricity, the introduction of improved proc- 
esses and labor-saving machinery, the greater subdivision 
and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilitation 
of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effectiveness 
of labor. 

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural 
to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions 
would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the 
laborer ; that the enormous increase in the power of pro- 
ducing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. 
Could a man of the last century— a Franklin ora Priestley 
— have seen, in a vision of the future, the steamship taking 
the place of the sailing vessel, the railroad train of the 
wagon, the reaping machine of the scythe, the threshing 
machine of the flail; could he have heard the throb of 
the engines that in obedience to human will, and for the 
satisfaction of human desire, exert a power greater than 
that of all the men and all the beasts of burden of the 
earth combined ; could he have seen the forest tree 
transformed into finished lumber — into doors, sashes, 
blinds, boxes or barrels, with hardly the touch of a human 
hand; the great workshops where boots and shoes are 


4 INTRODUCTORY. 


turned out by the case with less labor than the old-fashioned 
cobbler could have put on a sole; the factories where, under 
the eye of a girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds 
of stalwart weavers could have turned it out with their 
hand-looms ; could he have seen steam hammers shaping 
mammoth shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate machin- 
* ery making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting through 
the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the whale; 
could he have realized the enormous saving of labor re- 
sulting from improved facilities of exchange and communi- 
cation—sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in England, 
and the order given by the London banker in the afternoon 
executed in San Francisco in the morning of the same day; 
could he have conceived of the hundred thousand improve- 
ments which these only suggest, what would he have in- 
ferred as to the social condition of mankind ? 

It would not have seemed like an inference; further than 
the vision went, it would have seemed as though he saw ; 
and his heart would have leaped and his nerves would 
have thrilled, as one who from a hight beholds just ahead 
of the thirst-stricken caravan the living gleam of rustling 
woods and the glint of laughing waters. Plainly, in the 
sight of the imagination, he would have beheld these new 
forces elevating society from its very foundations, lifting 
the very poorest above the possibility of want, exempting 
the very lowest from anxiety for the material needs of life; 
he would have seen these slaves of the lamp of knowledge 
taking on themselves the traditional curse, these muscles 
of iron and sinews of steel making the poorest laborer’s 
life a holiday, in which every high quality and noble im- 
pulse could have scope to grow. 

And out of these bounteous material conditions he would 
have seen arising, as necessary sequences, moral conditions 
realizing the golden age of which mankind have always 
dreamed. Youth no longer stunted and starved; age no 
longer harried by avarice; the child at play with the tiger; 
the man with the muck-rake drinking in the glory of the 
stars! Foul things fled, fierce things tame; discord turned 


THE PROBLEM. 5 


to harmony! For how could there be greed where all had 
enough? How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, 
the brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of pov- 
erty, exist where poverty had vanished? Who should 
crouch where all were freemen ; who oppress where all 
were peers? 

More or less vague or clear, these have been the hopes, 
these the dreams born of the improvements which give this 
wonderful century its preéminence. They have sunk so 
deeply into the popular mind as to radically change the 
currents of thought, to recast creeds and displace the most 
fundamental conceptions. The haunting visions of higher 
possibilities have not merely gathered splendor and vivid- 
ness, but their direction has changed — instead of seeing 
behind the faint tinges of an expiring sunset, all the glory 
of the daybreak has decked the skies before. 

It is true that disappointment has followed disappoint- 
ment, and that discovery upon discovery, and invention 
after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those 
who most need respite, nor brought plenty to the poor. 
But there have been so many things to which it seemed 
this failure could be laid, that up to our time the new faith 
has hardly weakened. We have better appreciated the 
difficulties to be overcome ; but not the less trusted that 
the tendency of the times was to overcome them. 

Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts 
which there can be no mistaking. From all parts of the 
civilized world come complaints of industrial depression; 
of labor condemned to involuntary idleness; of capital 
massed and wasting; of pecuniary distress among business 
men; of want and suffering and anxiety among the work- 
ing classes. All the dull, deadening pain, all the keen, 
maddening anguish, that to great masses of men are 
involved in the words ‘‘ hard times,” afflict the world to- 
day. This state of things, common to communities differ- 
ing so widely in situation, in political institutions, in fiscal 
‘and financial systems, in density of population and in social 
organization, can hardly be accounted for by local causes. 


6 INTRODUCTORY. 


There is distress where Jarge standing armies are main- 
tained, but there is also distress where the standing armies 
are nominal; there is distress where protective tariffs stu- 
pidly and wastefully hamper trade, but there is also distress 
where trade is nearly free; there is distress where autocratic 
government yet prevails, but there is also distress where 
political power is wholly in the hands of the people; in 
countries where paper is money, and in countries where 
cold and silver are the only currency. Evidently, beneath 
all such things as these, we must infer a common cause. 

That there is a common cause, and that it is either what 
we call material progress or something closely connected 
with material progress, becomes more than an inference 
when it is noted that the phenomena we class together 
_ and speak of as industrial depression, are but intensifica- 
tions of phenomena which always accompany material 
progress, and which show themselves more clearly and 
strongly as material progress goes on. Where the con- 
ditions to which material progress everywhere tends are 
most fully realized —that is to say, where population is 
densest, wealth greatest; and the machinery of production 
and exchange most highly dev-loped—we find the deepest 
poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most 
of enforced idleness. | 

It is to the newer countries—that is, to the countries 
where material progress is yet in its earlier stages— that 
laborers emigrate in search of higher wages, and capital 
flows in search of higher interest. It is in the older coun- 
tries — that is to say, the countries where material progress 
has reached later stages — that widespread destitution is 
found in the midst of the greatest abundance. Go into one 
of the new communities where Anglo-Saxon vigor is just 
beginning the race of progress; where the machinery of 
production and exchange is yet rude and inefficient; where 
the increment of wealth is not yet great enough to enable 
any class to live in ease and luxury; where the best house 
is but a cabin of logs or a cloth and paper shanty, and the 
richest man is forced to daily work —and though you will 


THE PROBLEM. 7 


find an absence of wealth and all its concomitants, you 
will find no beggars. There is no luxury, but there is no 
destitution. No one makes an easy living, nor a very good 
living; but every one can make a living, and no one able 
and willing to work is oppressed by the fear of want. 

But just as such a community realizes the conditions 
which all civilized communities are striving for, and ad- 
vances in the scale of material progress —just as closer 
settlement and a more intimate connection with the rest of 
the world, and greater utilization of labor-saving machin- 
ery, make possible greater economies in production and ex- 
change, and wealth in consequence increases, not merely 
in the aggregate, but in proportion to population —so does 
poverty take a darker aspect. Some get an infinitely better 
and easier living, but others find it hard to get a living at 
all. The ‘‘tramp” comes with the locomotive, and alms- 
houses and prisons are as surely the marks of ‘ material 
progress” as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and 
magnificent churches. Upon streets lighted with gas and 
patrolled by uniformed policemen, beggars wait for the 
passer-by, and in the shadow of college, and library, and 
museum, are gathering the more hideous Huns and fiercer 
Vandals of whom Macaulay prophesied. 

This fact—the great fact that poverty and all its concom- 
itants show themselves in communities just as they develop 
into the conditions towards which material progress tends 
—proves that the social difficulties existing wherever a cer- 
tain stage of progress has been reached, do not arise from 
local circumstances, but are, in some way or another, en- 
gendered by progress itself. 

And, unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last be- 
coming evident that the enormous increase in productive 
power which has marked the present century and is still 
going on with accelerating ratio, has no tendency to extir- 
pate poverty or to lighten the burdens of those compelled 
to toil. It simply widens the gulf between Dives and Laz- 
arus, and makes the struggle for existence more intense. 
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers 


S INTRODUCTORY. 


of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not 
have dreamed. But in factories where labor-saving ma- 
chinery has reached its most wonderful development, little 
children are at work ; wherever the new forces are anything 
like fully utilized, large classes are maintained by charity or 
live on the verge of recourse to it; amid the greatest accu-_ 
mulations of wealth, men die of starvation, and puny infants 
suckle dry breasts ; while everywhere the greed of gain, the 
worship of wealth, shows the force of the fear of want. The 
promised land flies before us ike the mirage. The fruits 
of the tree of knowledge turn as we grasp them to apples 
of Sodom that crumble at the touch. 

It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and 
that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been 
raised ; but these gains are not general. In them the 
lowest class do not share.* I do not mean that the condi- 
tion of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been 
improved ; but that there is nowhere any improvement 
which €an be credited to increased productive power. I 
mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is 
in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in 
the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay, more, 
that it is to still further depress the condition of the lowest 
class. The new forces, elevating in their nature though 
they be, do not act upon the social fabric from underneath, 
as was for a long time hoped and believed, but strike it 
at a point intermediate between top and bottom. It is as 
though an immense wedge were being forced, not under- 
neath society, but through society. Those who are above 
the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below 
are crushed down. 

This depressing effect is not generally realized, for it 
is not apparent where there has long existed a class 
just able to live. Where the lowest class barely lives, as 


* It is true that the poorest may now in certain ways enjoy what the richest a cen- 
tury ago could not have commanded, but this does not show improvement of condition 
so long as the ability to obtain the necessaries of life is not increased. The beggar in a 
great city may enjoy many things from which the backwoods farmer is debarred, but 
that does not prove the condition of the city beggar better than that of the independ. 
ent farmer, 


THE PROBLEM. 9 


has been the case for a long time in many parts of Europe, 
it is impossible for it to get any lower, for the next lowest 
step is out of existence, and no tendency to further de- 
pression can readily show itself. But in the progress of 
new settlements to the conditions of older communities it 
may clearly be seen that material progress does not merely , 
fail to relieve poverty — it actually produces it. In the 
United States it is clear that squalor and misery, and the 
vices and crimes that spring from them, everywhere increase 
as the village grows to the city, and the march of develop- 
ment brings the advantages of the improved methods of 
production and exchange. It isin the older and richer 
sections of the Union that pauperis and distress among 
the working classes are becoming most painfully apparent. 
If there is less.deep poverty in San Francisco than in New 
York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind New 
York in all that both cities are striving for? When San 
Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who 
can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted 
children on her streets ? 

This association of poverty with progress is the great 
enigma of our times. It is-the central fact from which 
spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that per- 
plex the world, and with which statesmanship and phil- 
anthropy and education grapple in vain. From it come 
the clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive 
and self-reliant nations. It is the riddle which the Sphinx 
of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is 
to be destroyed. So long as all the increased wealth 
which modern progress brings goes but to build up great 
fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast 
between the House of Have and the House of Want, 
progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The re- © 
action must come. ‘The tower leans from its foundations, 
and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe. To 
educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to 
make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring so- 
cial inequality political institutions under which men are 
theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex, 


10 INTRODUCTORY. 


All-important as this question is, pressing itself from 
every quarter painfully upon attention, it has not yet re- 
ceived a solution which accounts for all the facts and points 
to any clear and simple remedy. Thisis shown by the wide- 
ly varying attempts to account for the prevailing depres- 
sion. They exhibit not merely a divergence between vulgar 
notions and scientific theories, but also show that the con- 
currence which should exist between those who avow the 
same general theories breaks up upon practical questions 
into an anarchy of opinion. Upon high economic authority 
we have been told that the prevailing depression is due to 
over-consumption ; upon equally high authority, that it is 
due to over-production ; while the wastes of war, the exten- 
sion of railroads, the attempts of workmen to keep up wages, 
the demonetization of silver, the issues of paper money, the 
increase of labor-saving machinery, the opening of shorter 
avenues to trade, etc., etc., are separately pointed out as 
the cause, by writers of reputation. 

And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that there 
is a necessary conflict between capital and labor, that ma- 
chinery is an evil, that competition must be restrained and 
interest abolished, that wealth may be created by the issue 
of money, that it is the duty of government to furnish 
capital or to furnish work, are rapidly making way among 
the great body of the people, who keenly feel a hurt and 
are sharply conscious of a wrong. Such ideas, which bring 
great masses of men, the repositories of ultimate political 
power, under the leadership of charlatans and demagogues, 
are fraught with danger ; but they cannot be successfully 
combated until political economy shall give some answer to 
the great question which shall be consistent with all her 
teachings, and which shall commend itself to the ARs 
tions of the great masses of men. 

It must be within the province of political economy to 
give such an answer. Yor political economy is not a set of 
dogmas. It is the explanation of a certain set of facts. It 
is the science which, in the sequence of certain phenomena, 
seeks to trace mutual relations and to identify cause and 


THE PROBLEM. fl) 


effect, just as the physical sciences seek to do in other sets 
of phenomena. It lays its foundations upon firm ground. 
‘The premises from which it makes its deductions are truths 
which have the highest sanction ; axioms which we all rec- 
ognize ; upon which we safely base the reasoning and ac- 
tions of every-day life, and which may be reduced to the 
metaphysical expression of the physical law that motion 
seeks the line of least resistance—viz., that men seek to 
gratify their desires with the least exertion. Proceeding 
from a basis thus assured, its processes, which consist sim- 
ply in identification and separation, have the same certainty. 
In this sense it 1s as exact a science as geometry, which, 
from similar truths relative to space, obtains its conclusions 
by similar means, and its conclusions when valid should be 
as self-apparent. And although in the domain of political 
economy we cannot test our theories by artificially produced 
combinations or conditions, as may be done in some of the 
other sciences, yet we can apply tests no less conclusive, by 
comparing societies in which different conditions exist, or 
by, in imagination, separating, combining, adding or elim- 
inating forces or factors of known direction. 

I propose in the following pages to attempt to solve by 
the methods of political economy the great problem I have 
outlined. I propose to seek the law which associates poy- 
erty with progress, and increases want with advancing 
wealth; and I believe that in the explanation of this para- 
dox we shall find the explanation of those recurring seasons 
of industrial and commercial paralysis which, viewed inde- 
pendently of their relations to more general phenomena, 
seem so inexplicable. Properly commenced and carefully, 
pursued, such an investigation must yield a conclusion that 
will stand every test, and as truth will correlate with all other 
truth. For in the sequence of phenomena there is no acci- 
dent. Every effect has a cause, and every fact implies a 
preceding fact. 

That political economy, as at present taught, does not ex- 
plain the persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth ina 
manner which accords with the deep-seated perceptions 


gf INTRODUCTORY. 


of men ; that the unquestionable truths which it does teach 
are unrelated and disjointed ; that it has failed to make the 
progress in popular thought that truth, even when unpleas- 
ant, must make ; that, on the contrary, after a century of 
cultivation, during which it has engrossed the attention of 
some of the most subtle and powerful intellects, it should 
be spurned by the statesman, scouted by the masses, and 
relegated in the opinion of many educated and thinking 
men to the rank of a pseudo-science in which nothing is 
fixed or can be fixed—must, it seems to me, be due not to 
any inability of the science when properly pursued, but to 
some false step in its premises, or overlooked factor in its 
estimates. And as such mistakes are generally concealed by 
the respect paid to authority, I propose in this inquiry to 
take nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theo- 
ries to the test of first principles, and should they not stand 
the test, to freshly interrogate facts in the endeavor to dis- 
cover their law. | 

I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclu- 
sion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is 
the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very heart 
of our civilization to-day women faint and little children 
moan. But what that law may prove to be is not our affair. 
If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prej- 
udices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that 
have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn 
back. 


jiaX GO) G4 et 


WAGES AND CAPITAL. 


CHAPTEh [.—THE CURRENT DOCTRINE—ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 

CHAPTER II.—THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 

CHAPTER III.—WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL, BUT PRODUCED BY 
THE LABOR. 

CHAPTER IV.—THE MAINTENANCE OF LABORERS NOT DRAWN FROM CAP. 
ITAL. 

CHAPTER V.—THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 


He that is to follow philosophy must be a freeman in mind.—Ptolemy. 


CHAPTER IT. 


THE CURRENT DOCTRINE OF WAGES—ITs INSUFFICIENCY. 


Reducing to its most compact rorm the problem we have 
set out to investigate, let us examine, step by step, the ex- 
planation which political economy, as now accepted by the 
best authority, gives of it. 

The cause which produces poverty in the midst of ad- 
vancing wealth is evidently the cause which exhibits itself 
in the tendency, everywhere recognized, of wages to a 
minimum. Let us, therefore, put our inquiry into this 
compact form : 


Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages 
tend toa minimum which will give but a bare living ? 


The answer of the current political economy is, that 
wages are fixed by the ratio between the number of labor- 
ers and the amount of capital devoted to the employment 
of labor, and constantly tend to the lowest amount on 
which laborers will consent to live and reproduce, because 
the increase in the number of laborers tends naturally to 
follow and overtake any increase in capital. The increase 
of the divisor being thus held in check only by the possi- 
bilities of the quotient, the dividend may be increased te 
infinity without greater result. 

In current thought this doctrine holds all but undisputed 
sway. It bears the indorsement of the very highest names 
among the cultivators of political economy, and though 
there have been attacks upon it, they are generally more 


16 WAGES AND CAPITAL, Book 1. 


formal than real.* It is assumed by Buckle as the basis of 
his generalizations of universal history. It is taught in 
all, or nearly all, the great English and American univers- 
ities, and is laid down in text-books which aim at leading 
the masses to reason correctly upon practical affairs, while 
it seems to harmonize with the new philosophy, which, 
having in a few years all but conquered the scientific 
world, is now rapidly permeating the general mind. 

Thus entrenched in the upper regions of thought, it is in 
cruder form even more firmly rooted in what may be styled 
the lower. What gives to the fallacies of protection such 
a tenacious hold, in spite of their evident inconsistencies 
and absurdities, is the idea that the sum to be distributed 
in wages is in each community a fixed one, which the com- 
petition of ‘‘ foreign labor’’ must still further subdivide. 
The same idea underlies most of the theories which aim 
athe abolition of interest and the restriction of competi- 
tion, as the means whereby the share of the laborer in the 
general wealth can be increased; and it crops out in every 
direction among those who are not thoughtful enough to 
have any theories, as may be seen in the columns of news- 
papers and the debates of legislative bodies. 

And yet, widely accepted and deeply rooted as it is, it 
seems to me that this theory does not tally with obvious 
facts. For, if wages depend upon the ratio between the 
amount of labor seeking employment and the amount of 
capital devoted to its employment, the relative scarcity or 
abundance of one factor must mean the relative abundance 
or scarcity of the other. Thus, capital must be relatively 
abundant where wages are high, and relatively scarce 
where wages are low. Now, as the capital used in paying 
wages must largely consist of the capital constantly seek- 


* This seems to me true of Mr. Thornton’s objections, for while he denies the exist- 
ence of a predetermined wage fund, consisting of a portion of capital set apart for the 
purchase of labor, he yet holds (which is the essential thing) that wages are drawn 
from capital, and that increase or decrease of capital is increase or decrease of the fund 
available for the payment of wages. The most vital attack upon the wage fund doctrine, 
of which I know, is that of Professor Francis A. Walker (The Wages Question: New 
York, 1876), yet he admits that wages are in large part advanced from capital—which, 
so far as it goes, is all that the staunchest supporter of the wage fund theory could 
claim—while he fully accepts the Malthusian theory. Thus his practical conclusions in 
nowise differ from those reached by expounders of the current theory. 


Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. ilyé 


ing investment, the current rate of interest must be the 
measure of its relative abundance or scarcity. So, if it be 
true that wages depend upon the ratio between the amount 
of labor seeking employment and the capital devoted to its 
employment, then high wages (the mark of the relative 
scarcity of labor) must be accompanied by low interest (the 
mark of the relative abundance of capital), and reversely, 
low wages must be accompanied by high interest. 

This is not the fact, but the contrary. Eliminating from 
interest the element of insurance, and regarding only in- 
terest proper, or the return for the use of capital, is it not 
a general truth that interest is high where and when wages 
are high, and low where and when wages are low? Both 
wages and interest have been higher in the United States 
than in England, in the Pacific than in the Atlantic States. 
Is it not a notorious fact that where labor flows for higher 
wages, capital also flows for higher interest? Is it not true 
that wherever there has been a general rise or fall in wages 
there has been at the same time a similar rise or fall in 
interest? In California, for instance, when wages were 
higher than anywhere else in the world, so also was inter- 
est higher. Wages and interest have in California gone 
down together. “When common wages were $5 a day, 
the ordinary bank rate of interest was twenty-four per 
cent. per annum. Now that common wages are $2 or 
$2.50 a day, the ordinary bank rate is from ten to twelve 
per cent. 

Now, this broad, general fact, that wages are higher in 
new countries, where capital is relatively scarce, than in 
old countries, where capital is relatively abundant, is too 
glaring to be ignored. And although very lightly touched 
upon, it is noticed by the expounders of the current politi- 
cal economy. ‘The manner in which it is noticed proves 
what I say, that it is utterly inconsistent with the accepted 
theory of wages. For inexplaining it such writers as Mill, 
Fawcett, and Price virtually give up the theory of wages 
upon which, in the same treatises, they formally insist. 
Though ey declare that wages are fixed by the ratio 


18 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book L 


between capital and laborers, they explain the higher wages 
and interest of new countries by the greater relative pro- 
duction of wealth. I shall hereafter show that this is not 
the fact, but that, on the contrary, the production of wealth 
is relatively larger in old and densely populated countries 
than in new and sparsely populated countries. But at 
present I merely wish to point out the inconsistency. For 
to say that the higher wages of new countries are due to 
greater proportionate production, is clearly to make the 
ratio with production, and not the ratio with capital, the 
determinator of wages. 

Though this inconsistency does not seem to have been 
perceived by the class of writers to whom I refer, it has 
been noticed by one of the most logical of the expounders 
of the current political economy. Professor Cairnes* en- 
deavors in a very ingenious way to reconcile the fact with the 
theory, by assuming that in new countries, where industry 
is generally directed to the production of food and what in 
manufactures is called raw material, a much larger propor- 
tion of the capital used in production is devoted to the pay- 
ment of wages than in older countries where a greater part 
must be expended in machinery and material, and thus, in 
the new country, though capital is scarcer (and interest is 
higher), the amount determined to the payment of wages is 
really larger, and wages are also higher. For instance, of 
$100,000 devoted in an old country to manufactures, $80,- 
000 would probably be expended for buildings, machinery 
and the purchase of materials, leaving but $20,000 to be 
paid out in wages, whereas in a new country, of $30,000 
devoted to agriculture, etc., not more than $5,000 would be 
required for tools, etc., leaving $25,000 to be distributed in 
wages. In this way it is explained that the wage fund may 
be comparatively large where capital is comparatively 
scarce, and high wages and high interest accompany each 
other. 

In what follows I think I shall be able to show that this 


* Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded, Chapter 1, Part 2 


Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. ihe 


. explanation is based upon a total misapprehension of the 
relations of labor to capital—a fundamental error as to the 
fund from which wages are drawn ; but at present it is only 
necessary to point out that the connection in the fluctuation 
of wages and interest in the same countries and in the same 
branches of industry cannot thus be explained. In those 
a ternations known as ‘‘ good times” and ‘‘ hard times” a 
brisk demand for labor and good wages is always accompa- 
nied by a brisk demand for capital and stiff rates of inter- 
est. While, when laborers cannot find employment and 
wages droop, there is always an accumulation of capital seek- 
ing investment at low rates.* The present depression has 
been no less marked by want of employment and distress 
among the working classes than by the accumulation of 
unemployed capital in all the great centers, and by nominal 
rates of interest on undoubted security. Thus, under con- 
ditions which admit of no explanation consistent with the 
current theory, do we find high interest coinciding with 
high wages and low interest with low wages—capital seem- 
ingly scarce when labor is scarce, and abundant when labor 
is abundant. 

All these well known facts, which coincide with each 
other, point to a relation between wages and interest, but 
itis to a relation of conjunction not of opposition. HKvi- 
dently they are utterly inconsistent with the theory that 
wages are determined by the ratio between labor and capi- 
tal, or any part of capital. 

How, then, it will be asked, could such a theory arise? 
How is it that it has been accepted by a succession of econ- 
omists, from the time of Adam Smith to the present day? 

If we examine the reasoning by which in current treatises 
this theory of wages is supported, we see at once that it is 
not an induction from observed facts, but a deduction from 
a previously assumed theory—viz., that wages are drawn 
from capital. It being assumed that capital is the source 


* Times of commercial panic are marked by high rates of discount, but this is evi- 
iently not a high rate of interest, properly so-called, but a high rate of insurance 
Ruinst risk. 


20 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I, 


of wages, it necessarily follows that the gross amount of 
wages must be limited by the amount of capital devoted to 
che employment of labor, and hence that the amount indi- 
vidual laborers can receive, must be determined by the 
ratio between their number and the amount of capital 
existing for their recompense.* This reasoning is valid, but 
the conclusion, as we have seen, does not correspond with 
the facts. The fault, therefore, must be in the premises. 
Let us see. 

IT am aware that the theorem that wages are drawn from 
capital is one of the most fundamental and apparently best 
settled of current political economy, and that it has been 
accepted as axiomatic by all the great thinkers who have 
devoted their powers to the elucidation of the science. 
Nevertheless, I think it can be demonstrated to be a funda- 
mental error—the fruitful parent of a long series of errors, 
which vitiate most important practical conclusions. This 
demonstration I am about to attempt. It is necessary that 
it should be clear and conclusive, for a doctrine upon which 
so much important reasoning is based, which is supported 
by such a weight of authority, which is so plausible in 
itself, and is so liable to recur in different forms, cannot be 
safely brushed aside in a paragraph. 

The proposition I shall endeavor to prove, is: 

That wages, instead of being drawn from capital, arein real- 
ity drawn from the product of the labor for which they are 
paid. 


Now, inasmuch as the current theory that wages are 
drawn from capital also holds that capital is reimbursed 


* For instance McCulloch (Note VI to Wealth of Nations) says : ‘‘ That portion of 
the capital or wealth of a country which the employers of labor intend to or are will- 
ing to pay out in the purchase of labor, may be much larger at one time than another. 
But whatever may be its absolute magnitude, it obviously forms the only source from 
which any portion of the wages of labor can be derived. No other fund is in existence 
from which the laborer, as such, can draw a single shilling. And hence it follows that 
the average rate of wages, or the share of the national capital appropriated to the em- 
ployment of labor falling, at an average, to each laborer, must entirely depend on its 
amount as compared with the number of those amongst whom it has to be divided.” 
Similar citations might be made from all the standard economists. 


+ We are speaking of labor expended 1n production, to which it is best for the sake 


of simplicity to confine the inquiry. Any question which may arise in the reader’s 
mind as to wages for unproductive services had best therefore be deferred. 


Chap. 1. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 21 


from production, this at first glance may seem a distinction 
without a difference — a mere change in terminology, to 
discuss which would be but to add to those unprofitable 
disputes that render so much that has been written upon 
politico-economic subjects as barren and worthless as the 
controversies of the various learned societies about the true 
reading of the inscription on the stone that Mr. Pickwick 
found. But that it is much more than a formal distinction 
will be apparent when it is considered that upon the differ- 
ence between the two propositions are built up all the cur- 
rent theories as to the relations of capital and labor ; that 
from it are deduced doctrines that, themselves regarded as 
axiomatic, bound, direct, and govern the ablest minds in 
the discussion of the most momentous questions. For, upon 
the assumption that wages are drawn directly from capital, 
and not from the product of the labor, is based, not only the 
doctrine that wages depend upon the ratio between capital 
and labor, but the doctrine that industry is limited by cap- 
ital—that capital must be accumulated before labor is em- 
ployed, and labor cannot be employed except as capital is 
accumulated ; the doctrine that every increase of capital 
gives or is capable of giving additional employment to in- 
dustry ; the doctrine that the conversion of circulating cap- 
ital into fixed capital lessens the fund applicable to the 
maintenance of labor ; the doctrine that more laborers can 
be employed at low than at high wages ; the doctrine that 
capital applied to agriculture will maintain more laborers 
than if applied to manufactures ; the doctrine that profits 
are high or low as wages are low or high, or that they de- 
pend upon the cost of the subsistence of laborers ; together 
with such paradoxes as that a demand for commodities is 
not a demand for labor, or that certain commodities may be 
increased in cost by a reduction in wages or diminished in 
cost by an increase in wages. 

In short, all the teachings of the current political econ- 
omy, in the widest and most important part of its domain, 
are based more or less directly upon the assumption that la- 
bor is maintained and paid out of existing capital before the 


22 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book: I. 


product which constitutes the ultimate object is secured. 
If it be shown that this is an error, and that on the contrary 
the maintenance and payment of labor do not even tempo- 
rarily trench on capital, but are directly drawn from the 
product of the labor, then all this vast superstructure is left 
without support and must fall. And so likewise must fall 
the vulgar theories which also have their base in the belief 
that the sum to be distributed in wages is a fixed one, the 
individual shares in which must be necessarily decreased 
by an increase in the number of laborers. 

The difference between the current theory and the one 
I advance is, in fact, similar to that between the mercan- 
tile theory of international exchanges and that with which 
Adam Smith supplanted it. Between the theory that com- 
merce is the exchange of commodities for money, and the 
theory that it is the exchange of commodities for commodi- 
ties, there may seem no real difference when it is remem- 
bered that the adherents of the mercantile theory did not 
assume that money had any other use than as it could be 
exchanged for commodities. Yet, in the practical applica- 
tion of these two theories, there arises all the difference 
between rigid governmental protection and free trade. 

If I have said enough to show the reader the ultimate im- 
portance of the reasoning through which 1 am about to ask 
him to follow me, it will not be necessary to apologize in 
advance either for simplicity or prolixity. In arraigning a 
doctrine of such importance—a doctrine supported by such a 
weight of authority, it is necessary to be both clear and 
thorough. 

Were it not for this I should be tempted to dismiss with 
a sentence the assumption that wages are drawn from capi- 
tal. For all the vast superstructure which the current pco- 
litical economy builds upon this doctrine, is in truth based 
upon a foundation which has been merely taken for granted, 
without the slightest attempt to distinguish the apparent 
from the real. Because wages are generally paid in money, 
and in many of the operations of production are paid before 
the product is fully completed, or can be utilized, it is 


Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 23 


inferred that wages are drawn from pre-existing capital, 
and, therefore, that industry is limited by capital—that is 
to say that labor cannot be employed until capital has been 
accumulated, and can only be employed to the extent capi- 
tal has been accumulated. 

Yet in the very treatises in which the limitation of indus- 
try by capital is laid down without reservation and made the 
basis for the most important reasonings and elaborate theo- 
ries, we are told that capital is stored up or accumulated 
labor—‘‘ that part of wealth which is saved to assist future 
production.” If we substitute for the word ‘‘ capital’ this 
definition of the word, the proposition carries its own refu- 
tation, for that labor cannot be employed until the results 
of labor are saved becomes too absurd for discussion. 

Should we, however, with this reductio ad absurdum, 
attempt to close the argument, we should probably be met 
with the explanation, not that the first laborers were sup- 
plied by Providence with the capital necessary-to set them 
to work, but that the proposition merely refers to a state of 
society in which production has become a complex opera- 
tion. 

But the fundamental truth, that in all economic reasoning 
must be firmly grasped and never let go, is that society in its 
most highly developed form is but an elaboration of society 
in its rudest beginnings, and that principles obvious in the 
simpler relations of men are merely disguised and not 
abrogated or reversed by the more intricate relations that 
result from the division of labor and the use of complex 
tools and methods. The steam grist mill, with its compli- 
cated machinery exhibiting every diversity of motion, is 
simply what the rude stone mortar dug up from an ancient 
river bed was in its day—an instrument for grinding corn. 
And every man engaged in it, whether tossing wood into 
the furnace, running the engine, dressing stones, printing 
sacks or keeping books, is really devoting his labor to the 
same purpose that the pre-historic savage did when he used 
his mortar—the preparation of grain for human food. 

And so, if we reduce to their lowest terms all the com- 


24 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1 


plex operations of modern production, we see that each 
individual who takes part in this infinitely subdivided and 
intricate network of production and exchange is really doing 
what the primeval man did when he climbed the trees for 
fruit or followed-the receding tide for shellfish—endeavor- 
ing to obtain from nature by the exertion of his powers the 
satisfaction of his desires. If we keep this firmly in mind, 
if we look upon production as a whole—as the co-operation 
of all embraced in any of its great groups to satisfy the va- 
rious desires of each, we plainly see that the reward each 
obtains for his exertions comes as truly and as directly from 
nature as the result of that exertion, as did that of the first 
man. 

To illustrate : In the simplest state of which we can con- 
ceive, each man digs his own bait and catches his own fish. 
The advantages of the division of labor soon become appar- 
ent, and one digs bait while the others fish. Yet evidently 
the one who digs bait is in reality doing as much towards 
the catching of fish as any of those who actually take the 
fish. So when the advantages of canoes are discovered, 
and instead of all going a-fishing, one stays behind and 
makes and repairs canoes, the canoe-maker is in reality de- 
voting his labor to the taking of fish as much as the actual 
fishermen, and the fish which he eats at night when the 
fishermen come home, are as truly the product of his labor 
as of theirs. And thus when the division of labor is fairly 
inaugurated, and instead of each attempting to satisfy all 
of his wants by direct resort to nature, one fishes, another 
hunts, a third picks berries, a fourth gathers fruit, a fifth 
makes tools, a sixth builds huts, and a seventh prepares 
clothing—each one is, to the extent he exchanges the direct 
product of his own labor for the direct product of the labor 
of others, really applying his own labor to the production 
of the things he uses—is in effect satisfying his particular 
desires by the exertion of his particular powers ; that is to 
say, what he receives he in reality produces. If he digs 
roots and exchanges them for venison, he is in effect as 
truly the procurer of the venison as though he had gone in 


SS 


Chap. I. THE CURRENT DOCTRINE. 2 


chase of the deer and left the huntsman to dig his own 
roots. The common expression, ‘‘ I made so and so,” sig- 
nifying ‘‘ I earned so and so,” or ‘‘I earned money with 
which I purchased so and so,”’ is, economically speaking, 
not metaphorically but literally true. Earning is making. 

Now, if we follow these principles, obvious enough in a 
simpler state of society, through the complexities of the 
state we call civilized, we shall see clearly that in every case 
in which labor is exchanged for commodities, production 
really precedes enjoyment ; that wages are the earnings— 
that is to say, the makings of labor—not the advances of 
capital, and that the laborer who receives his wages in 
money (coined or printed, it may be, before his labor 
commenced) really receives in return for the addition his 
labor has made to the general stock of wealth, a draft upon 
that general stock, which he may utilize in any particular 
form of wealth that will best satisfy his desires ; and that 
neither the money, which is but the draft, nor the particu- 
lar form of wealth which he uses it to call for, represents ad- 
vances of capital for his maintenance, but on the contrary 
represents the wealth, or a portion of the wealth, his labor 
has already added to the general stock. 

Keeping these principles in view we see that the draughts- 
man, who, shut up in some dingy office on the banks of the 
Thames, is drawing the plans for a great marine engine, is 
in reality devoting his labor to the production of bread and 
meat as truly as though he were garnering the grain in Cal- 
ifornia or swinging a lariat on a La Plata pampa; that he 
is as truly making his own clothing as though he were 
shearing sheep in Australia or weaving cloth in Paisley, 
and just as effectually producing the claret he drinks at 
dinner as though he gathered the grapes on the banks of the 
Garonne. The miner who, two thousand feet under ground 
in the heart of the Comstock, is digging out silver ore, is, in 
effect, by virtue of a thousand exchanges, harvesting crops in 
valleys five thousand feet nearer the earth’s center ; chasing 
the whale through Arctic icefie®ls ; plucking tobacco leaves 
in Virginia; picking coffee berries in Honduras; cutting 


26 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1 


sugar cane on the Hawaiian Islands ; gathering cotton in 
Georgia or weaving it in Manchester or Lowell; making 
quaint wooden toys for his children in the Hartz Mountains ; 
or plucking amid the green and gold of Los Angeles orch- 
ards the oranges which, when his shift is relieved, he will 
take home to his sick wife. The wages which he receives 
on Saturday night at the mouth of the shaft, what are they 
but the certificate to all the world that he has done these 
things—the primary exchange in the long series which 
transmutes his labor into the things he has really been la- 
boring for? 


All this is clear when looked at in this way; but to 
meet this fallacy in all its strongholds and lurking places 
we must change our investigation from the deductive to the 
inductive form. Letus nowsee, if, beginning with facts and 
tracing their relations, we arrive at the same conclusions as 
are thus obvious when, beginning with first principles, we 
trace their exemplification in complex facts. 


CHAPTER II. 
THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 


Before proceeding further in our inquiry, let us make 
sure of the meaning of our terms, for indistinctness in their 
use must inevitably produce ambiguity and indeterminate- 
ness in reasoning. Not only is it requisite in economic rea- 
soning to give to such words as ‘‘ wealth,” ‘‘ capital,” 
“rent,” ‘‘ wages,” and the ike, a much more definite sense 
than they bear in common discourse, but, unfortunately, 
even in political economy there is, as to some of these 
terms, no certain meaning assigned by common consent, 
different writers giving to the same term different meanings, 
and the same writers often using a term in different senses. 
Nothing can add to the force of what has been said by so 
many eminent authors as to the importance of clear and 
precise definitions, save the example (not an infrequent 
one) of the same authors falling into grave errors from the 
very cause they warned against. And nothing so shows 
the importance of language in thought as the spectacle of 
even acute thinkers basing important conclusions upon the 
use of the same word in varying senses. I shall endeavor 
to avoid these dangers. It will be my effort throughout, as 
any term becomes of importance, to clearly state what I 
mean by it, and to use it in that sense and in no other. Let 
me ask the reader to note and to bear in mind the defini- 
tions thus given, as otherwise I cannot hope to make myself 
properly understood. I shall not attempt to attach arbi- 
trary meanings to words, or to coin terms, even when it 
would be convenient to do so, but shall conform to usage 
as closely as is possible, only endeavoring to so fix the 
meaning of words that they may clearly express thought. 


28 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1. 


What we have now on hand is to discover whether, as a 
matter of fact, wages are drawn from capital. As a pre- 
liminary, let us settle what we mean by wages and what 
we mean by capital. To the former word a sufficiently 
definite meaning has been given by economic writers, but 
the ambiguities which have attached to the use of the latter 
in political economy will require a detailed examination. 

As used in common discourse ‘‘ wages”? means a com- 
pensation paid to a hired person for his services ; and we 
speak of one man ‘‘ working for wages,” in contradistinc- 
tion to another who is ‘‘ working for himself.” The use 
of the term is still further narrowed by the habit of 
applying it solely to compensation paid for manual labor. 
We do not speak of the wages of professional men, 
managers or clerks, but of their fees, commissions, or 
salaries. Thus the common meaning of the word wages 
is the compensation paid to a hired person for manual 
labor. But in political economy the word wages has a 
much wider meaning, and includes all returns for exertion. 
For, as political economists explain, the three agents 
or factors in production are land, labor, and capital, and 
that part of the produce which goes to the second of these 
factors is by them styled wages. 

Thus the term labor includes all human exorona in the 
production of wealth, and wages, being that part of the 
produce which goes to labor, includes all reward for such 
exertion. There is, therefore, in the politico-economic 
sense of the term wages no distinction as to the kind 
of labor, or as to whether its reward is received through an 
employer or not, but wages means the return received 
for the exertion of labor, as distinguished from the re- 
turn received for the use of capital, and the return re- 
ceived by the landholder for the use of land. The man 
who cultivates the soil for himself receives his wages in 
its produce, just as, if he uses his own capital and owns 
his own land, he may also receive interest and rent; 
the hunter’s wages are the game he kills; the fisher- 
man’s wages are the fish he takes. The gold washed out 


chap. Il. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 29 


by the self-employing gold-digger is as much his wages as 
the money paid to the hired coal miner by the purchaser of 
his labor,* and, as Adam Smith shows, the high profits of 
retail storekeepers, are in large part wages, being the rec- 
ompense of their labor and not of their capital. In short, 
whatever is received as the result or reward of exertion is 
‘* wages.” 

This is all it is now necessary to note as to ‘‘ wages,” 
but it is important to keep this in mind. For in the stand- 
ard economic works this sense of the term wages is recog- 
nized with greater or less clearness only to be subsequently 
ignored. 

But it is more difficult to clear away from the idea of cap- 
ital the ambiguities that beset it, and to fix the scientific 
use of the term. In general discourse, all sorts of things 
that have a value or will yield a return are vaguely spoken 
of as capital, while economic writers vary so widely that 
the term can hardly be said to have a fixed meaning. Let 
us compare with each other the definitions of a few repre- 
sentative writers : 

‘That part of a man’s stock,” says Adam Smith (Book 
II, Chap. I), ‘‘ which he expects to afford him a revenue, is 
called his capital,’ and the capital of a country or society, 
he goes on to say, consists of (1) machines and instruments 
of trade which facilitate and abridge labor ; (2) buildings, 
not mere dwellings, but which may be considered instru- 
ments of trade—such as shops, farmhouses, etc.; (3) im- 
provements of land which better fit it for tillage or culture ; 
(4) the acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants ; 
(5) money ; (6) provisions in the hands of producers and 
dealers, from the sale of which they expect to derive a 
profit ; (7) the material of, or partially completed, manufac- 
tured articles still in the hands of producers or dealers ; 
(8) completed articles still in the hands of producers or 
dealers. The first four of these he styles fixed capital, 


*This was recognized in common speech in California, where the placer miners styled 
their earnings their ‘‘ wages,” and spoke of making high wages, or low wages, 
according tc the amount of gold taken out. 


380 WAGES AND GOAPITAL. Book 1. 


and the last four circulating capital, a distinction of which it 
is not necessary to our purpose to take any note. 
Ricardo’s definition is : 


‘** Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is employed 
in production, and consists of food, clothing, tools, raw materials, 
machinery, etc., necessary to give effect to labor.’’—Principles of Po- 
litical Economy, Chapter V 


This definition, it will be seen, is very different from tha 
of Adam Smith, as it excludes many of the things which he 
includes—as acquired talents, articles of mere taste or lux- 
ury in the possession of producers or dealers ; and includes 
some things he excludes—such as food, clothing, etc., in the 
possession of the consumer. 

McCulloch’s definition is: 


‘*The capital of a nation really comprises all those portions of the 
produce of industry existing in it that may be directly employed either 
to support human existence or to facilitate production.’’— Notes on 
Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chap. I. 


This definition follows the line of Ricardo’s, but is wider. 
While it excludes everything that is not capable of aiding 
production, it includes everything that is so capable, with- 
out reference to actual use or necessity for use—the horse 
drawing a pleasure carriage being, according to McCul- 
loch’s view, as he expressly states, as much capital as the 
horse drawing a plow, because he may, if need arises, be 
used to draw a plow. 

John Stuart Mill, following the same general line as Ric- 
ardo and McCulloch, makes neither the use nor the capa- 
bility of use, but the determination to use, the test of capi- 
tal. He says: 


‘‘ Whatever things are destined to supply productive labor with the 
shelter, protection, tools and materials which the work requires, and 
to feed and otherwise maintain the laborer during the process, are cap- 
ital.’’—Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. 1V. 


These quotations sufficiently illustrate the divergence of 
the masters. Among minor authors the variance is still 
ereater, as a few examples will suffice to show. 

Professor Wayland, whose ‘‘ Elements of Political Econ- 
omy” has long been a favorite text book in American edu- 
cational institutions, where there has been any pretense of 
teaching political economy, gives this lucid definition : 


Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 31 


‘‘The word capital is used in two senses. In relation to product it 
means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In relation 
to industry, the material on which industry is about to confer value, 
that on which it has conferred value ; the instruments which are used 
for the conferring of value, as well as the means of sustenance by 
which the being is supported while he is engaged in performing the 
operation.” —LHlements of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. I. 


Henry C. Carey, the American apostle of protectionism, 
defines capital as ‘‘the instrument by which man obtains 
mastery over nature, including in it the physical and men- 
tal powers of man himself.” Professor Perry, a Massachu- 
setts free trader, very properly objects to this that it hope- 
lessly confuses the boundaries between capital and labor, 
and then himself hopelessly confuses the boundaries be- 
tween capital and land by defining capital as ‘‘ any valuable 
thing outside of man himself from whose use springs a 
pecuniary increase or profit.” An English economic writer 
ct high standing, Mr. Wm. Thornton, begins an elaborate 
examination of the relations of labor and capital (‘‘ On 
Labor’) by stating that he will include land with capital, 
which is very much as if one who proposed to teach algebra 
should begin with the declaration that he would consider 
the signs plus and minus as meaning the same thing and 
having the same value. An American writer, also of high 
standing, Professor Francis A. Walker, makes the same 
declaration in his elaborate book on ‘‘The Wages Ques- 
tion.” Another English writer, N. A. Nicholson (‘‘ The 
Science of Exchanges,’ London, 1873), seems to cap the 
climax of absurdity by declaring in one paragraph (p. 26) 
that ‘‘ capital must of course be accumulated by saving,”’ 
and in the very next paragraph stating that ‘‘the land 
which produces a crop, the plow which turns the soil, the 
labor which secures the produce, and the produce itself, if a 
material profit is to be derived from its employment, are all 
alike capital.’”’ But how land and labor are to be accumus 
lated by saving them he nowhere condescends to explain. 
In the same way a standard American writer, Professor 
Amasa Walker (p. 66, ‘‘ Science of Wealth,”’) first declares 
that capital arises from the net savings of labor and then 
immediately afterwards declares that land is capital. 


32 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1 


I might go on for pages, citing contradictory and self: 
contradictory definitions. But it would only weary the 
reader. It is unnecessary to multiply quotations. Those 
already given are sufficient to show how wide a difference 
* exists as to the comprehension of the term capital. Any 
one who wants further illustration of the ‘‘ confusion worse 
confounded” which exists on this subject among the pro- 
fessors of political economy may find it in any library where 
the works of these professors are ranged side by side. 

Now, it makes little difference what name we give to 
things, if when we use the name we always keep in view 
the same things and no others. But the difficulty arising 
in economic reasoning from these vague and varying defi- 
nitions of capital is that it is only in the premises of rea- 
soning that the term is used in the peculiar sense assigned 
by the definition, while in the practical conclusions that are 
reached it is always used, or at least it is always understood, 
in one general and definite sense. When, for instance, it is 
said that wages are drawn from capital, the word capital is 
understood in the same sense as when we speak of the scarc- 
ity or abundance, the increase or decrease, the destruction or 
increment, of capital—a commonly understood and definite 
sense which separates capital from the other factors of 
production, land and labor, and also separates it from like 
things used merely for gratification. In fact, most people 
understand well enough what capital is until they begin to 
define it, and I think their works will show that the eco- 
nomic writers who differ so widely in their definitions use the 
term in this commonly understood sense in all cases except 
in their definitions and the reasoning based on them. 

This common sense of the term is that of wealth devoted 
to procuring more wealth. Dr. Adam Smith correctly ex- 
presses this common idea when he says: ‘‘ That part of a 
man’s stock which he expects to afford him revenue is called - 
his capital.” And the capital of a community is evidently 
the sum of such individual stocks, or that part of the aggre- 
gate stock which is expected to procure more wealth This 
also is the derivative sense of the term. The word capitai, 


pn 


Chap. II. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 33 


as philologists trace it, comes down to us from a time when 
wealth was estimated in cattle, and a man’s income depended 
upon the number of head he could keep for their increase. 

The difficulties which beset the use of the word capi- 
tal, as an exact term, and which are even more strikingly 
exemplified in current political and social discussions than 
in the definitions of economic writers, arise from two facts 
— first, that certain classes of things, the possession of 
which to the individual is precisely equivalent to the pos- 
session of capital, are not part of the capital of the commu- 
nity ; and, second, that things of the same kind may or 
may not be capital, according to the purpose to which they 
are devoted. 

With a little care as to these points, there should be no 
difficulty in obtaining a sufficiently clear and fixed idea of 
what the term capital as generally used properly includes ; 
such an idea as will enable us to say what things are capi- 
tal and what are not, and to use the word without ambiguity 
or slip. 

Land, labor, and capital are the three factors of produc- 
tion. If we remember that capital is thus a term used in 
contradistinction to land and labor, we at once see that 
nothing properly included under either one of these terms 
can be properly classed as capital. The term land necessarily 
includes, not merely the surface of the earth as distinguished 
from the water and the air, but the whole material universe. 
outside of man himself, for it is only by having access to 
land, from which his very body is drawn, that man can 
come in contact with or use nature. The term land em- 
braces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and opportu- 
nities, and, therefore, nothing that is freely supplied by 
nature can be properly classed as capital. A fertile field, a 
rich vein of ore, a falling stream which supplies power, 
may give to the possessor advantages equivalent to the pos- 
session of capital, but to class such things as capital would 
be to put an end to the distinction between land and capi- 
tal, and, so far as they relate to each other, to make the 
two terms meaningless, The term labor, in like manner, 


) 
34 | WAGES AND CAPITAL. a ir 
includes all human exertion, and hence humah powers 
whether natural or acquired can never properly be classed 
as capital. In common parlance we often speak of a man’s 
knowledge, skill, or industry as constituting his capital; 
but this is evidently a metaphorical use of language that 
must be eschewed in reasoning that aims at exactness. Su- 
periority in such qualities may augment the income of an 
individual just as capital would, and an increase in the 
knowledge, skill, or industry of a community may have the  —— 
same effect in increasing its production as would an increase 
of capital ; but this effect is due to the increased power of 
labor and not to capital Increased velocity may give to 
the impact of a cannon ball the same effect as increased 
weight, yet, nevertheless, weight is one thing and velocity 
another. 
(| Thus we must exclude from the category of capital every- 
| thing that may be included either as land or labor. Doing 
so, there remain only things which are neither land nor 
labor, but which have resulted from the union of these two 
- original factors of production Nothing can be properly 
capital that does not consist of these—that is to say, noth- 
ing can be capital that is not wealth. 

But it is from ambiguities in the use of this inclusive term 
wealth that many of the ambiguities which beset the term 
capital are derived. 

As commonly used the word ‘‘ wealth’’ is applied to any- 
thing having an exchange value. But when used as a term 
of political economy it must be limited to a much more defi- 
nite meaning, because many things are commonly spoken 
of as wealth which in taking account of collective or gen- 
eral wealth cannot be considered as wealth at all. Such 
things have an exchange value, and are commonly spoken, 
of as wealth, insomuch as they represent as between indie 
viduals, or between sets of individuals, the power of ob- 
taining wealth ; but they are not truly wealth, inasmuch as 
their increase or decrease does not affect the sum of wealth. 
Such are bonds, mortgages, promissory notes, bank bills, or 
other stipulations for the transfer of wealth. Such are 


' 
ee ee 


Chap. LL. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 3D 


slaves, whose value represents merely the power of one 
class to appropriate the earnings of another class. Such are 
lands, or other natural opportunities, the value of which is 
but the result of the acknowledgment in favor of certain 
_ persons of an exclusive right to their use, and which repre- 
sents merely the power thus given to the owners to demand 
a share of the wealth produced by those who use them. 
Increase in the amount of bonds, mortgages, notes, or bank 
bills cannot increase the wealth of the community that 
includes as well those who promise to pay as those who are 
entitled to receive. The enslavement of a part of their 
number could not increase the wealth of a people, for what 
the enslavers gained the enslaved would lose. Increase 
in land values does not represent increase in the common 
wealth, for what land owners gain by higher prices, the 
tenants or purchasers who must pay them will lose. And 
all this relative wealth, which, in common thought and 
speech, in legislation and law, is undistinguished from 
actual wealth, could,without the destruction or consumption 
of anything more than a few drops of ink and a piece of pa- 
per, be utterly annihilated. By enactment of the sovereign 
political power debts might be canceled, slaves emancipated, 
and land resumed as the common property of the whole 
people, without the aggregate wealth being diminished by 
the value of a pinch of snuff, for what some would lose others 
would gain. There would be no more destruction of 
wealth than there was creation of wealth when Elizabeth 
Tudor enriched her favorite courtiers by the grant of mo- 
nopolies, or when Boris Godoonof made Russian peasants 
merchantable property. 

All things which have an exchange value are, therefore, | 
not wealth, in the only sense in which the term can be used | 
in political economy. Only such things can be wealth the 
production of which increases and the destruction of which 
decreases the aggregate of wealth. If we consider what 
these things are, and what their nature is, we shall have no 
difficulty in defining wealth. 

When we speak of a community increasing in wealth—as | 


86 WAGES AND GAPITAL. Book 1. 


when we say that England has increased in wealth since the 
accession of Victoria, or that California is a wealthier coun- 
try than when it was a Mexican territory—we do not mean 
to say that there is more land, or that the natural powers of 
the land are greater, or that there are more people (for 
when we wish to express that idea we speak of increase of 
population), or that the debts or dues owing by some of 
these people to others of their number have increased ; but 
we mean that there is an increase of certain tangible things, 
having an actual and not merely a relative value—such as 
buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral 
products, manufactured goods, ships, wagons, furniture, 
and the like. The increase of such things constitutes an in- 
crease of wealth ; their decrease is a lessening of wealth ; 
and the community that, in proportion to its numbers, has 
most of such things is the wealthiest community. The 
common character of these things is that they consist of 
natural substances or products which have been adapted. 
by human labor to human use or gratification, their value 
depending on the amount of labor which upon the average 
would be required to produce things of like kind. 

Thus wealth, as alone the term can be used in political 
economy, consists of natural products that have been 
secured, moved, combined, separated, or in other ways 
modified by human exertion, so as to fit them for the gratifi- 
cation of human desires. It is, in other words, labor 


~* impressed upon matter in such a way as to store up, as the 


heat of the sun is stored up in coal, the power of human 
labor to minister to human desires. Wealthis not the sole 
object of labor, for labor is also expended in ministering 
directly to desire ; but itis the object and result of what 
we call productive labor—that is, labor which gives value to 
material things. Nothing which nature supplies to man 
without his labor is wealth, nor yet does the expenditure of 
labor result in wealth unless there is a tangible product 
which has and retains the power of ministering to desire. 
Now, as capital is wealth devoted to a certain purpose, 
nothing can be capital which does not fall within this defi. 


Jhap. 11. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 37 


nition of wealth. By recognizing and keeping thisin mind, 
we get rid of misconceptions which vitiate all reasoning in 
which they are permitted, which befog popular thought, and 
have led into mazes of contradiction even acute thinkers. 

But though all capital is wealth, all wealth is not capital. 
Capital is only a part of wealth--that part, namely, which is _) 
devoted to the aid of production. It is in drawing this line 
between the wealth that is and the wealth that is not 
capital that a second class of misconceptions are likely to 
occur. 

The errors which I have been pointing out, and which 
consist in confounding with wealth and capital things essen- 
tially distinct, or which have but a relative existence, are 
now merely vulgar errors. They are widespread, it is true, 
and have a deep root, being held, not merely by the less 
educated classes, but, seemingly, by a large majority of 
those who in such advanced countries as England and the 
United States mold and guide public opinion, make the 
laws in Parliaments, Congresses and Legislatures, and 
administer them inthe courts. They crop out, moreover, in 
the disquisitions of many of those flabby writers who have 
burdened the press and darkened counsel by numerous 
volumes which are dubbed political economy, and which 
pass as text-books with the ignorant and as authority with 
those who do not think for themselves. Nevertheless, they 
are only vulgar errors, inasmuch as they receive no counte- 
nance from the best writers on political economy. By one 
of those lapses which flaw his great work, and strikingly 
evince the imperfections of the highest talent, Adam 
Smith counts as capital certain personal qualities, an inclu- 
sion which is not consistent with his original definition of 
capital as stock from which revenue is expected. But this 
error has been avoided by his most eminent successors, and 
in the definitions (previously given) of Ricardo, McCul- 
loch, and Mill, it is not involved. Neither in their defini- 
tions, nor in that of Smith, is involved the vulgar error 
which confounds as real capital things which are only rela- 
tively sapital, such as evidences of debt, land values, ete 


a 


38 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Booked 


But as to things which are really wealth, their definitions 
differ from each other, and widely from that of Smith, as to 
what is and what is not to be considered as capital. The 
stock of a jeweler would, for instance, be included as cap- 
ital by the definition of Smith, and the food or clothing in 
possession of a laborer would be excluded. But the defini- 
tions of Ricardo and McCulloch would exclude the stock 
of the jeweler, as would also that of Mill, if understood as 
most persons would understand the words I have quoted. 
But, as explained by him, it is neither the nature nor the 
destination of the things themselves which determines 
whether they are or are not capital, but the intention of the 
owner to devote either the things or the value received from 
their sale to the supply of productive labor with tools, ma- 
terials, and maintenance. All these definitions, however, 
agree in including as capital the provisions and clothing of 
the laborer, which Smith excludes. 

Let us consider these three definitions, which represent 
the best teachings of current political economy: 

To McCulloch’s definition of capital as ‘‘all those por- 
tions of the produce of industry that may be directly em- 
ployed either to support human existence or to facilitate 
production,” there are obvious objections. One may pass 
along any principal street in a thriving town or city and see 
stores filled with all sorts of valuable things, which, though 
they cannot be employed either to support human existence 
or to facilitate production, undoubtedly constitute part of 
the capital of the storekeepers and part of the capital of 
the community. And he can also see products of industry 
capable of supporting human existence or facilitating pro- 
duction being consumed in ostentation or useless luxury. 
Surely these, though they might, do not constitute part of 
capital. 

Ricardo’s definition avoids including as capital things 
which might be but are not employed in production, by 
covering only such as are employed. But it is open to the 
first objection made to McCulloch’s. If only wealth that 
may be, or that is, or that is destined to be, used in sup- 


Chap. IL. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 39 


porting producers, or assisting production, is capitai, then 
the stocks of jewelers, toy dealers, tobacconists, confec. 
tioners, picture dealers, etc.—in fact, all stocks that con- 
sist of, and all stocks in so far as they consist of articles 
of luxury, are not capital. 

If Mill, by remitting the distinction to the mind of the 
capitalist, avoids this difficulty (which does not seem to me 
clear), it is by making the distinction so vague that no 
power short of omniscience could tell in any given country 
at any given time what was and what was not capital. 

But the great defect which these definitions have in com- 
mon is that they include what clearly cannot be accounted 
capital, if any distinction is to be made between laborer 
and capitalist. For they bring into the category of capital 
the food, clothing, etc., in the possession of the day la- 
borer, which he will consume whether he works or not, as 
well as the stock in the hands of the capitalist, with which 
he proposes to pay the laborer for his work. 

Yet, manifestly, this 1s not the sense in which the term 
capital is used by these writers when they speak of labor 
and capital as taking separate parts in the work of pro- 
duction and separate shares in the distribution of its 
proceeds; when they speak of wages as drawn from capital, 
or as depending upon the ratio between labor and capital, 
or in any of the ways in which the term is generally used 
by them. In all these cases the term capital is used in its 
commonly understood sense, as that portion of wealth 
which its owners do not propose to use directly for their 
own gratification, but for the purpose of obtaining more 
wealth. In short, by political economists, in everything 
except their definitions and first principles, as well as by the - 
world at large, ‘“‘ that part of a man’s stock,” to use the 
words of Adam Smith, ‘‘ which he expects to afford him rev- 
enue is called his capital.” This is the only sense in which 
the term capital expresses any fixed idea—the only sense 
in which we can with any clearness separate it from wealth 
and contrast it with labor. For, if we must consider as 
capital everything which supplies the laborer with food, 


40 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


clothing, skelter, etc., then to find a laborer who is not a 
capitalist we shall be forced to hunt up an absolutely naked 
man, destitute even of a sharpened stick, or of a burrow in 
the ground —a situation in which, save as the result of ex- 
ceptional circumstances, human beings have never yet been 
found. 

It seems to me that the variance and inexactitude in these 
definitions arise from the fact that the idea of what capital 
is has been deduced from a preconceived idea of how capi- 
tal assists production. Instead of determining what capital 
is, and then observing what capital does, the functions of 
capital have first been assumed, and then a definition of 
capital made which includes all things which do or may 
perform those functions. Let us reverse this process, and, 
adopting the natural order, ascertain what the thing is be- 
fore settling what it does. AIl we are trying to do, all that 
it is necessary to do, is to fix, as it were, the metes and 
bounds of a term that in the main is well apprehended — to 
make definite, that is, sharp and clear on its verges, a 
common idea. 

If the articles of actual wealth existing at a given time 
in a given community were presented in situ to a dozen in- 
telligent men who had never read a line of political 
economy, it 1s doubtful if they would differ in respect 
to a single item, as to whether it should be accounted 
capital or not. Money which its owner holds for use 
in his business or in speculation would be accounted 
capital; money set aside for household or personal expenses 
would not. That part of a farmer’s crop held for sale or for 
seed, or to feed his help in part payment of wages, would be 
accounted capital; that held for the use of his own family 
would not be. The horses and carriage of a hackman 
would be classed as capital, but an equipage kept for the 
pleasure of its owner would not. So no one would think of 
counting as capital the false hair on the head of a woman, 
the cigar in the mouth of a smoker, or the toy with 
which a child is playing; but the stock of a hair dealer, 
of a tobacconist, or of the keeper of a toy store, would be 


Chap. 11. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 41) 


unhesitatingly set down as capital. A coat which a tailor 
had made for sale would be accounted capital, but not the 
coat he had made for himself. Food in the possession of a 
hotel keeper or a restaurateur would be accounted capital, 
but not the food in the pantry of a housewife, or in the lunch 
basket of a workman. Pig iron in the hands of the smelter, 
or founder, or dealer, would be accounted capital, but not 
the pig iron used as ballast in the hold of a yacht. The 
bellows of a blacksmith, the looms of a factory, would be 
capital, but not the sewing machine of a woman who does 
only her own work; a building let for hire, or used for busi- 
ness or productive purposes, but not a homestead. In 
short, I think we should find that now, as when Dr. Adam 
Smith wrote, ‘‘ that part of a man’s stock which he expects 
to yield him a revenue is called his capital.” And, omitting 
his unfortunate slip as to personal qualities, and qualifying 
somewhat his enumeration of money, it is doubtful if we 
could better list the different articles of capital than did 
Adam Smith in the passage which in the previous part of 
this chapter I have condensed. 

Now, if, after having thus separated the wealth that is 
capital from the wealth that is not capital, we look for the 
distinction between the two classes, we shali not find it to be 
as to the character, capabilities, or final destination of the 
things themselves, as has been vainly attempted to draw it; 
but it seems to me that we shall find it to be as to whether 
they are or are not in the possession of the consumer.* Such 
articles of wealth as in themselves, in their uses, or in their 
products, are yet to be exchanged are capital; such articles 
of wealth as are in the hands of the consumer are not capi- 
tal. Hence, if we define capital as wealth in course of ex- 
change, understanding exchange to include, not merely the 


* Money may be said to be in the hands of the consumer when devoted to the pro- 
curement of gratification, as, though not in itself devoted to consumption, it represents 
wealth which is; and thus what in the previous paragraph I have given as the common 
classification would be covered by this distinction, and would be substantially correct. 
In speaking of money in this connection, I am of course speaking of coin, for although 
paper money may perform all the functions of coin, it is not wea.th, and cannot there- 
fore be capital. 


b 


42, WAGES AND OAPITAL. Book I. 


passing from hand to hand, but also such transmutations 
as occur when the reproductive or transforming forces of 
nature are utilized for the increase of wealth, we shall, I 
think, comprehend all the things that the general idea of 
capital properly includes, and shut out all it does not. 
Under this definition, it seems to me, for instance, will fall 
all such tools as are really capital. For it is as to whether 
its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes 
a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. 
Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things 
which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept 
by a gentleman for his own amusement is not. Thus, 
wealth used in the construction of a railroad, a public 
telegraph line, a stage coach, a theater, a hotel, etc., may 
be said to be placed in the course of exchange. The 
exchange is not effected all at once, but little by little, 
with an indefinite number of people. Yet there is an 
exchange, and the ‘‘ consumers” of the railroad, the tele- 
graph line, the stage coach, theater or hotel, are not the 
owners, but the persons who from time to time use them. | 

Nor is this definition inconsistent with the idea that cap- 
ital is that part of wealth devoted to production. It is too 
narrow an understanding of production which confines it 
merely to the making of things. Production includes not 
merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to 
the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as 
truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his 
stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is 
theirs. Butitis not worth while now to dwell upon the func- 
tions of capital, which we shall be better able to determine 
hereafter. Nor is the definition of capital I have suggested 
of any importance. I am not writing a text-book, but only 
attempting to discover the laws which control a great social 
problem, and if the reader has been led to form a clear idea 
of what things are meant when we speak of capital my pur- 
pose is served. 

But before closing this digression let me call attention to 


Chap. LI. THE MEANING OF THE TERMS. 43 


what is often forgotten—namely, that the terms ‘‘ wealth,”’ 
‘‘ capital,” ‘‘ wages,” and the like, as used in political 
economy are abstract terms, and that nothing can be gen- 
erally affirmed or denied of them that cannot be affirmed 
or denied of the whole class of things they represent. 
The failure to bear this in mind has led to much con 
fusion of thought, and permits fallacies, otherwise trans- 
parent, to pass for obvious truths. Wealth being an ab- 
stract term, the idea of wealth, it must be remembered, 
involves the idea of exchangeability. The possession of 
wealth to a certain amount is potentially the possession of 
any or all species of wealth to that equivalent in exchange. 
And, consequently, so of capital. 


GASP VER ei. 
WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL, BUT PRODUCED BY THE LABOR 


The importance of this digression will, I think, become 
more and more apparent as we proceed in our inquiry, but 
its pertinency to the branch we are now engaged in may at 
once be seen. 

It is at first glance evident that the economic meaning of 
the term wages is lost sight of, and attention 1s concentratec 
upon the common and narrow meaning of the word, when 
it is affirmed that wages are drawn from capital. Tor, in all 
those cases in which the laborer is his own employer and 
takes directly the produce of his labor as its reward, it is 
plain enough that wages are not drawn from capital, but 
result directly as the product of the labor. If, for instance, 
I devote my labor to gathering birds’ eggs or picking wild 
berries, the eggs or berries I thus get are my wages. 
Surely no one will contend that in such a case wages are 
drawn from capital. There is no capital in the case. An 
absolutely naked man, thrown on an island where no 
human being has before trod, may gather birds’ eggs or 
pick berries. 

Or if I take a piece of leather and work it up into a pair 
of shoes, the shoes are my wages—the reward of my exer- 
tion. Surely they are not drawn from capital — either my 
capital or any one else’s capital — but are brought into exist- 
ence by the labor of which they become the wages ; and in 
obtaining this pair of shoes as the wages of my labor, capi- 
tal is not even momentarily lessened one iota. For, if we 
call in the idea of capital, my capital at the beginning con- 
sists of the piece of leather, the thread, etc. As my labor 
goes on, value is steadily added, until, when my labor 
results in the finished shoes, I have my capital plus the 


Chap. LIT. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 45 


difference in value between the material and the shoes. In 
obtaining this additional value — my wages — how is capital 
at any time drawn upon ? 

Adam Smith, who gave the direction to economic thought 
that has resulted in the current elaborate theories of the 
relation between wages and capital, recognized the fact 
that in such simple cases as I have instanced, wages are 
the produce of labor, and thus begins his chapter upon the 
wages of labor (Chapter VIII): 


‘<The produce of labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of 
labor. In that original state of things which precedes both the appro- 
priation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of 
labor belongs to the laborer. He has neither landlord nor master to 
share with him.’’ 

Had the great Scotchman taken this as the initial point 
of his reasoning, and continued to regard the produce of 
labor as the natural wages of labor, and the landlord and 
master but as sharers, his conclusions would have been verv 
different, and political economy to-day would not em- 
brace such a mass of contradictions and absurdities; but 
instead of following the truth obvious in the simple modes 
of production as a clue through the perplexities of the 
more complicated forms, he momentarily recognizes it, 
only to immediately abandon it, and stating that ‘‘in every 
part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for 
one that is independent,” he re-commences the inquiry 
from a point of view in which the master is considered as 
providing from his capital the wages of his workmen. 

It is evident that in thus placing the proportion of self- 
employing workmen as but one in twenty, Adam Smith 
had in mind but the mechanic arts, and that, including all 
laborers, the proportion who take their earnings directly, 
without the intervention of an employer, must, even in 
Europe a hundred years ago, have been much greater than 
this. For, besides the independent laborers who in every 
community exist in considerable numbers, the agriculture 
of large districts of Europe has, since the time of the 
Roman Empire, been carried on by the metayer system, 
under which the capitalist receives his return from the 


46 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


laborer instead of the laborer from the capitalist. At any 
rate, in the United States, where any general law of wages 
must apply as fully as in Europe, and where in spite of the 
advance of manufactures, a very large part of the people 
are yet self-employing farmers, the proportion of laborers 
who get their wages through an employer must be compar- 
atively small. 

But it is not necessary to discuss the ratio in which self- 
employing laborers anywhere stand to hired laborers, nor 
is it necessary to multiply illustrations of the truism that 
where the laborer takes directly his wages they are the 
product of his labor, for as soon as it is realized that the 
term wages includes all the earnings of labor, as well when 
taken directly by the laborer in the results of his labor, as 
when received from an employer, it is evident that the 
assumption that wages are drawn from capital, on which as 
a universal truth such a vast superstructure is in standard 
politico-economic treatises so unhesitatingly built, is at 
least in large part untrue, and the utmost that can with any 
plausibility be affirmed, is that some wages (i.e.. wages 
received by the laborer from an employer) are drawn from 
capital. This restriction of the major premiss at once in- 
validates all the deductions that are made from it; but 
without resting here, let us see whether even in this 
restricted sense it accords with the facts. Let us pick up 
the clue where Adam Smith dropped it, and advancing 
step by step, see whether the relation of facts which is 
obvious in the simplest forms of production does not run 
through the most complex. 

Next in simplicity to ‘‘ that original state of things,” of 
which many examples may yet be found, where the whole 
produce of labor belongs to the laborer, is the arrangement 
in which the laborer, though working for another person, 
or with the capital of another person, receives his wages in 
kind—that is to say, in the things his\sbor produces. In 
this case it is as clear as in the case of the self-employing 
laborer that the wages are really drawn from the produce 
ot the labor, and not at all from capital. If I hire a man 


_Chep. III, WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 47 


to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, pay- 
ing him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes, that 
his labor secures, there can be no question that the source 
of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. Of 
this form of hiring is the saer-and-daer stock tenancy, 
treated of with such perspicuity by Sir Henry Maine in his 
‘Karly History of Institutions,” and which so clearly in- 
volved the relation of employer and employed as to ren- 
der the acceptor of cattle the man or vassal of the capital- 
ist who thus employed him. It was cn such terms as 
these that Jacob worked for Laban, and to this day, 
even in civilized countries, it is not an infrequent mode of 
employing labor. The farming of land on shares, which 
prevails to a considerable extent in the Southern States of 
the Union and in California, the metayer system of Europe, 
as well as the many cases in which superintendents, sales- 
men, etc., are paid by a percentage of profits, what are they 
but the employment of labor for wages which consist of 
part of its produce ? 

The next step in the advanee from simplicity to complex- 
ity is where the wages, though estimated in kind, are 
paid in an equivalent of something else. For instance, on 
American whaling ships the custom is not to pay fixed 
wages, but a ‘‘ lay,” or proportion of the catch, which varies 
from a sixteenth to a twelfth to the captain down to a 
three-hundredth to the cabin-boy. Thus, when a whaleship 
comes into New Bedford or San Francisco after a success- 
ful cruise, she carries in her hold the wages of her crew, as 
well as the profits of her owners, and an equivalent which 
will reimburse them for all the stores used up during 
the voyage. Can anything be clearer than that these wages 
—this oil and bone which the crew of the whaler have 
taken — have not been drawn from capital, but are really a 
part of the produce of their labor? Nor is this fact changed 
or obscured in the slightest degree where, as a matter of 
convenience, instead of dividing up between the crew their 
proportion of the oil and bone, the value of each man’s 
share is estimated at the market price, and he is paid for it 


- 


48 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1. 


in money. The money is but the equivalent of the real 
wages, the oil and bone. In no way is there any advance 
of capitalin this payment. The obligation to pay wages 
does not accrue until the value from which they are to be 
paid is brought into port. At the moment when the owner 
takes from his capital money to pay the crew he addsto his 
capital oil and bone. 

So far there can be no dispute. Let us now take another 
step, which will bring us to the usual method of employing 
labor and paying wages. 

The Farallone Islands, off the Bay of San Francisco, 
are a hatching ground of sea-fowl, and a company who 
claim these islands employ men in the proper season to col- 
lect the eggs. They might employ these men for a pro- 
portion of the eggs they gather, as is done in the whale 
fishery, and probably would do so if there were much un- 
certainty attending the business; but as the fowl are plenti- 
ful and tame, and about so many eggs can be gathered by 
so much labor, they find it more convenient to pay their 
men fixed wages. The men go out and remain on the 
islands, gathering the eggs and bringing them to a landing, 
whence, at intervals of a few days, they are taken in a small 
vessel to San Francisco and sold. When the season is over 
the men return and are paid their stipulated wages in coin. 
Does not this transaction amount to the same thing as if, 
instead of being paid in coin, the stipulated wages were paid | 
in an equivalent of the eggs gathered? Does not the coin 
represent the eggs, by the sale of which it was obtained, 
and are not these wages as much the product of the labor 
for which they are paid as the eggs would be in the pos- 
session of a man who gathered them for himself without 
the intervention of any employer? 

To take another example, which shows by reversion the 
identity of wages in money with wages in kind. In San 
Buenaventura lives a man who makes an excellent living by 
shooting for their oiland skins the common hair seals which 
frequent the islands forming the Santa Barbara Channel. 
When on these sealing expeditions he takes two or three 


Chap. IIL. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM OAPITAL. 49 


Chinamen along to help him, whom at first he paid wholly 
in coin. But it seems that the Chinese highiy value some 
of the organs of the seal, which they dry and pulverize 
for medicine, as well as the long hairs in the whiskers 
of the male seal, which, when over a certain length, they 
greatly esteem for some purpose that to outside barbarians 
is not very clear. And this man soon found that the Chi- 
namen were very willing to take instead of money these 
parts of the seals killed, so that now, in large part, he 
thus pays them their wages. 

Now, is not what may be seen in all these cases — the 
identity of wages in money with wages in kind, true of all 
cases in which wages are paid for productive labor? Is not 
the fund created by the labor really the fund from which 
the wages are paid ? 

It may, perhaps, be said: ‘‘ There is this difference— 
where a man works for himself, or where, when working for 
an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages depend 
upon the result of his labor. Should that, from any mis- 
adventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When he works 
for an employer, however, he gets his wages anyhow—they 
depend upon the performance of the labor, not upon the 
result of the labor.” But this is evidently not a real dis- 
tinction. For on the average, the labor that is rendered 
for fixed wages not only yields the amount of the wages, 
but more ; else employers could make no profit. When 
wages are fixed, the employer takes the whole risk, and is 
compensated for this assurance, for wages when fixed are 
always somewhat less than wages contingent. But though 
when fixed wages are stipulated, the laborer who has per- 
formed his part of the contract has usually a legal claim 
upon the employer, it is frequently, if not generally, the 
case that the disaster which prevents the employer from 
reaping benefit from the labor prevents him from paying 
the wages. And in one important department of industry 
the employer is legally exempt in case of disaster, although 
the contract be for wages certain and not contingent. For 
the maxim of admiralty law is, that ‘‘ freight is the mother 


- 


50 WAGES AND CAPITAL. . Book L 


of wages,’ and though the seaman may have performed his 
part, the disaster which prevents the ship from earning 
freight deprives him of claim for his wages. 

In this legal maxim is embodied the truth for which I am 
contending. Production is always the mother of wages. 
Without production, wages would not and could not be. It 
is from the produce of labor, not from the advances of 

capital that wages come. 

—Wherever we analyze the facts this will be found to be 
true.For labor always precedes wages. This is as univer- 
sally true of wages received by the laborer from an em- 
ployer as it is of wages taken directly by the laborer who is 
his own employer. In the one class of cases, as in the 
other, reward is conditioned upon exertion. Paid some- 
times by the day, oftener by the week or month, occasion~ 
ally by the year, and in many branches of production by 
the piece, the payment of wages by an employer to an em- 
ployee always implies the previous rendering of labor by 
the employee for the benefit of the employer, for the few 
cases in which advance payments are made for personal 
services are evidently referable either to charity or to guar- 
antee and purchase. The name “‘ retainer,’’ given to advance 
payments to lawyers, shows the true character of the trans- 
action, as does the name ‘‘ blood money” given in ’long- 
shore vernacular to a payment which is nominally wages 
advanced to sailors, but which in reality is purchase money 
—hboth English and American law considering a sailor as 
much a chattel as a pig. 

I dwell on this obvious fact that labor always precedes 
wages, because it is all important to an understanding of 
the more complicated phenomena of wages that it should 
be kept in mind. And obvious as it is, as I have put it, the 
plausibility of the proposition that wages are drawn from 
capital — a proposition that is made the basis for such im- 
portant and far-reaching deductions— comes in the first in- 
stance from a statement that ignores and leads the atten- 
tion away from this truth. That statement is, that labor 
cannot exert its productive power unless supplied by capital 


Chap. III WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM GOAPITAL. 51 


with maintenance.* The unwary reader at once recognizes 
the fact that the laborer must have food, clothing, etc., in 
order to enable him to perform the work, and having been 
told that the food, clothing, etc., used by productive labor- 
ers are capital, he assents to the conclusion that the con- 
sumption of capital is necessary to the application of labor, 
and from this it is but an obvious deduction that industry is 
limited by capital—that the demand for labor depends 
upon the supply of capital, and hence that wages depend 
upon the ratio between the number of laborers looking for 
employment and the amount of capital devoted to hiring 
them. 

But I think the discussion in the previous chapter will 
enable any one to see wherein lies the fallacy of this rea- 
soning — a fallacy which has entangled some of the most 
acute minds in a web of their own spinning. It is in the 
use of the term capital in two senses. In the primary 
proposition that capital is necessary to the exertion of pro- 
ductive labor, the term ‘‘ capital’ is understood as in- 
cluding all food, clothing, shelter, etc.; whereas, in the 
deductions finally drawn from it, the term is used in its 
common and legitimate meaning of wealth devoted, not to 
the immediate gratification of desire, but to the procure- 
ment of more wealth — of wealth in the hands of employers 
as distinguished from laborers. The conclusion is no more 
valid than it would be from the acceptance of the proposi- 
tion that a laborer cannot go to work without his breakfast 
and some clothes, to infer that no more laborers can 
go to work than employers first furnish with breakfasts and 
clothes. Now, the fact is, that laborers generally furnish 
their own breakfasts and the clothes in which they go to 
work ; and the further fact is, that capital (in the sense in 


* Industry is limited by capital: * * There can be no more industry than is sup- 
plied with materials to work up and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often 
forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied 
not by the produce of present labor, but of past. They consume what has been pro- 
duced, not what is about to be produced. Now, of what has been produced a part only 
is allotted to the support of productive labor, and there will not and cannot be more of 
that labor than the portion so allotted (which is the capital of the country) can feed and 
provide with the materials and instruments of production.”—John Stuart Mill, Prin 
siples of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. V, See. I, 


} 


a 


52 WAGES AND GOAPITAL. Book I. 


which the word is used in distinction to labor) in excep- 
tional cases sometimes may, but is never compelled to 
make advances to labor before the work begins. Of all the 
vast number of unemployed laborers in the civilized world 
to-day, there is probably not a single one willing to work 
who could not be employed without any advance of wages. 
A great proportion would doubtless gladly go to work on 
terms which did not require the payment of wages before 
the end of a month ; it is doubtful if there are enough to 
be called a class who would not go to work and wait for 
their wages until the end of the week, as most laborers hab- 
itually do ; while there are certainly none who would not 
wait for their wages until the end of the day, or if you 
please, until the next meal hour. The precise time of the 
payment of wages is immaterial ; the essential point — the 
point I lay stress on —1is that it is after the performance of 
work. 

l The payment of wages, therefore, always implies the 


/previous rendering of labor. Now, what does the rendering 


of labor in production imply? Evidently the production of 
wealth, which, if it is to be exchanged or used in produce: 
tion, is capital. Therefore, the payment of capital in wages 
pre-supposes a production of capital by the labor for which 
the wages are paid. And as the employer generally makes 
a profit, the payment of wages is, so far as he is concerned, 
but the return to the laborer of a portion of the capital he 


/ has received from the labor. So far as the employee is con- 


cerned, it is but the receipt of a portion of the capital his 
labor has previously produced. As the value paid in the 
wages is thus exchanged for a value brought into being by 
the labor, how can it be said that wages are drawn from capi- 
tal or advanced by capital? Asin the exchange of labor for 
wages the employer always gets the capital created by the — 
labor before he pays out capital in the wages, at what point 
is his capital lessened even temporarily ?* 


* I speak of labor producing capital for the sake of greater clearness. What labor al- 
ways procures is either wealth (which may or may not be capital) or services, the cases in 
which nothing is obtained being merely except:onal cases of misadventure. Where the 
9bject of the labor is simply the gratification of the employer, as where I hire a man te 


Chap. III. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 53 


Bring the question to the test of facts. Take, for in- 
stance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged in turn- 
ing raw material into finished products — cotton into cloth, 
iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so on, as may be, 
and who pays his hands, as is generally the case, once a 
week. Make an exact inventory of his capital on Monday 
morning before the beginning of work, and it will consist 
of his buildings, machinery, raw materials, money on hand, 
and finished products in stock. Suppose, for the sake of 
simplicity, that he neither buys nor sells during the week, 
and after work has stopped and he has paid his hands on 
Saturday night, take a new inventory of his capital. The 
item of money will be less, for it has been paid out in 
wages ; there will be less raw material, less coal, etc., and 
a proper deduction must be made from the value of the 
buildings and machinery for the week’s wear and tear. But 
if he is doing a remunerative business, which must on the 
average be the case, the item of finished products will be so 
much greater as to compensate for all these deficiencies and 
show in the summing up an increase of capital. Manifestly, 
then, the value he paid his hands in wages was not drawn 
from his capital, or from any one else’s capital. It came, 
not from capital, but from the value created by the labor 
itself. There was no more advance of capital than if he had 
hired his hands to dig clams, and paid them with a part of 
the clams they dug. Their wages were as truly the produce 
of their labor as were the wages of the primitive man, when, 
long ‘‘ before the appropriation of land and the accumula- 
tion of stock,” he obtained an oyster by knocking it with a 
stone from the rocks. 

_ As the laborer who works for an employer does not get 
his wages until he has performed the work, his case is sim- 
ilar to that of the depositor in a bank who cannot draw 
money out until he has put money in. And as by drawing 


black my boots, I do not pay the wages from capital, but from wealth which I have 
devoted, not to reproductive uses, but to consumption for my own satisfaction. Even 
if wages thus paid be considered as drawn from capital, then by that act they pass 
from the category of capital to that of wealth devoted to the gratification of the 
possessor, as when a cigar dealer takes a dozen cigars from the stock he has for sale 
and puts them in his pocket for his own use. 


54 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


out what he has previously put in, the bank depositor does 
not lessen the capital of the bank, neither can laborers by 
receiving wages lessen even temporarily either the capital 
of the employer or the aggregate capital of the community, 
Their wages no more come from capital than the checks of 
depositors are drawn against bank capital. It is true that 
laborers in receiving wages do not generally receive back 
wealth in the same form in which they have rendered it, 
any more than bank depositors receive back the identical 
coins or bank notes they have deposited, but they receive it 
in equivalent form, and as we are justified in saying that 
the depositor receives from the bank the money he paid in, 
so are we justified in saying that the laborer receives in 
wages the wealth he has rendered in labor. 

That this universal truth is so often obscured, is largely 
due to that fruitful source of economic obscurities, the con- 
founding of wealth with money; and it is remarkable to see 
so many of those who, since Dr. Adam Smith made the egg 
stand on its end, have copiously demonstrated the fallacies 
of the mercantile system, fall into delusions of the very 
same kind in treating of the relations of capital and labor. 
Money being the general medium of exchanges, the common 
flux through which all transmutations of wealth from one 
form to another take place, whatever difficulties may exist 
to an exchange will generally show themselves on the side 
of reduction to money, and thus it is sometimes easier to 
exchange money for any other form of wealth than it is to 
exchange wealth in a particular form into money, for the 
reason that there are more holders of wealth who desire to 
make some exchange than there are who desire to make 
any: particular exchange. And so a producing employer, 
who has paid out his money in wages may sometimes find 
it difficult to turn quickly back into money the increased | 
value for which his money has really been exchanged, and 
is spoken of as having exhausted or advanced his capital 
in the payment of wages. Yet, unless the new value created 
by the labor is less than the wages paid (which can be only 
an exceptional case), the capital which he had before in 


Chap. III. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 55 


money he now has in goods — it has been changed in form, 
but not lessened. 

There is one branch of production in regard to which the 
confusions of thought which arise from the habit of estim- 
ating capital in money are least likely to occur, inasmuch 
as its product is the general material and standard of 
money. And it so happens that this business furnishes us, 
almost side by side, with illustrations of production passing 
from the simplest to most complex forms. 

In the early days of California, as afterward in Australia, 
the placer miner, who found in river bed or surface deposit 
the glittering particles which the slow processes of nature 
had for ages been accumulating, picked up or washed out 
his ‘‘ wages’”’ (so, too, he called them) in actual money, for 
coin being scarce, gold dust passed as currency by weight, 
and at the end of the day had his wages in money in a buck- 
skin bag in his pocket. There can be no dispute as to 
whether these wages came from capital or not. They were 
manifestly the produce of his labor. Nor could there be 
any dispute when the holder of a specially rich claim hired 
men to work for him, and paid them off in the identical 
money which their labor had taken from gulch or bar. As 
coin became more abundant, its greater convenience in sav- 
ing the trouble and loss of weighing, assigned gold dust to 
the place of a commodity, and with coin obtained by the 
sale of the dust their labor had procured, the employing 
miner paid off his hands. Where he had coin enough to 
do so, instead of selling his gold dust at the nearest store, 
and paying a dealer’s profit, he retained it until he got 
enough to take a trip, or send by express to San Francisco, 
where at the mint he could have it turned into coin with- 
out charge. While thus accumulating gold dust he was 
lessening his stock of coin ; just as the manufacturer, while 
accumulating a stock of goods, lessens his stock of money. 
Yet no one would be obtuse enough to imagine that, in 
thus taking in gold dust and paying out coin, the miner 
was lessening his capital. 

But the deposits that could be worked without prelimin- 


4 


5§ WAGES AND GAPITAL. Pinker 


ary labor were soon exhausted, and gold mining rapidly 
took a more elaborate character. Before claims could be 
opened so as to yield any return, deep shafts had to be 
sunk, great dams constructed, long tunnels cut through 
the hardest rock, water brought for miles over mountain 
ridges and across deep valleys, and expensive machinery 
put up. These works could not be constructed without 
capital. Sometimes their construction required years, 
during which no return could be hoped for, while the men 
employed had to be paid their wages every week, or every 
month. Surely, it will be said, in such cases, even if 
in no others, wages do actually come from capital; are 
actually advanced by capital; and must necessarily lessen 
capital in their payment! Surely here, at least, industry 
is limited by capital, for without capital such works could 
not be carried on! Let us see: 


It is cases of this class that are always instanced as show- 
ing that wages are advanced from capital. For where wages 
are paid before the object of the labor is obtained, or is 
finished—as in agriculture, where plowing and sowing 
must precede by several months the harvesting of the crop; 
as in the erection of buildings, the construction of ships, 
railroads, canals, etc.—it is clear that the owners of the 
capital paid in wages cannot expect an immediate return, 
but, as the phrase is, must ‘‘ outlay it,” or ‘‘lie out of it” 
for a time, which sometimes amounts to many years. And 
hence, if first principles are not kept in mind, it is easy to 
jump to the conclusion that wages are advanced by capital, 

But such cases will not embarrass the reader to whom in 
what has preceded I have made myself clearly understood. 
An easy analysis will show that these instances where wages 
are paid before the product is finished, or even produced, 
do not afford any exception to the rule apparent where the 
product is finished before wages are paid. 

If I go to a broker to exchange silver for gold, I lay down 
my silver, which he counts and puts away, and then hands 
me the equivalent in gold, minus his commission. Does 


Chap. III WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 57 


the broker advance me any capital? Manifestly not. What 
he had before in gold he now has in silver, plus his profit. 
And as he got the silver before he paid out the gold, there 
is on his part not even momentarily an advance of capital. 

Now, this operation of the broker is precisely analogous 
to what the capitalist does, when, in such cases as we are 
now considering, he pays out capital in wages. As the 
rendering of labor precedes the payment of wages, and as 
the rendering of labor in production implies the creation of 
value, the employer receives value before he pays out value 
—he but exchanges capital of one form for capital of 
another form. For the creation of value does not depend 
upon the finishing of the product; it takes place at every 
stage of the process of production, as the immediate result 
of the application of labor, and hence, no matter how long 
the process in which it is engaged, labor always adds to 
capital by its exertion before it takes from capital in its 
wages. | 

Here is a blacksmith at his forge making picks. Clearly 
he is making capital — adding picks to his employer’s capi- 
tal before he draws money from it in wages. Here is a 
machinist or boilermaker working on the keel-plates of a 
Great Eastern. Is not he also just as clearly creating value— 
making capital? The giant steamship, as the pick, is an 
article of wealth, an instrument of production, and though 
the one may not be completed for years, while the other is 
completed ina few minutes, each day’s work, in the one 
case as in the other, is as clearly a production of wealth —- 
an addition to capital. In the case of the steamship, as in 
the case of the pick, it is not the last blow, any more than 
the first blow, that creates the value of the finished product 
— the creation of value is continuous, it immediately results 
from the exertion of labor. 

We see this very clearly wherever the division of labor 
has made it customary for different parts of the full process 
of production to be carried on by different sets of producers 
—that is to say, wherever we are in the habit of estimating 
the amount of value which the labor expended in any pre- 


58 WAGES AND CAPITAL. . Book I. 


paratory stage of production has created. And amoment’s 
reflection will show that this is the case a3 to the vast ma- 
jority of products. Take a ship, a building, a jack-knife, a 
book, a lady’s thimble, or a loaf of bread. They are fin- 
ished products. But they were not produced at one oper- 
ation or by one set of producers. And this being the case, 
we readily distinguish different points or stages in the crea- 
tion of the value which as completed articles they repre- 
sent. When we do not distinguish different parts in the 
final process of production we do distinguish the value of 
the materials. The value of these materials may often be 
again decomposed many times, exhibiting as many clearly 
defined steps in the creation of the final value. At each of 
these steps we habitually estimate a creation of value, an 
addition to capital. The batch of bread which the baker is 
taking from the oven has a certain value. But thisis com- 
posed in part of the value of the flour from which the dough 
was made. And this again is composed of the value of the 
wheat, the value given by milling, etc. Iron in the form 
of pigs is very far from being a completed product. It 
must yet pass through several, or, perhaps, through 
many, stages of production before it results in the fin- 
ished articles that were the ultimate objects for which 
the iron ore was extracted from the mine. Yet, is not 
pig iron capital? And so the process of production is 
not really completed when a crop of cotton is gath- 
ered, nor yet when it is ginned and pressed; nor yet when 
it arrives at Lowell or Manchester; nor yet when it is con- 
verted into yarn; nor yet when it becomes cloth; but only 
when it is finally placed in the hands of the consumer. Yet 
at each step in this progress there is clearly enough a crea- 
tion of value—an addition to capital. Why, therefore 
although we do not so habitually distinguish and estimate 
it, is there not a creation of value — an addition to capital 
when the ground is plowed for the crop? Is it because it 
may possibly be a bad season and the crop may fail? Evi- 
dently not: fora lke possibility of misadventure attends 
every one of the many steps in the production of the fin- 


Chap. IIT. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 59 


ished article. On the average a crop is sure to come up, 
and so much plowing and sowing will on the average result 
in so much cotton in the boll, as surely as so much spin- 
ning of cotton yarn will result in so much cloth. 

In short, as the payment of wages is always conditioned 
upon the rendering of labor, the payment of wages in pro- 
duction, no matter how long the process, never involves 
any advance of capital, or even temporarily lessens capital. 
It may take a year, or even years, to build a ship, but the 
creation of value of which the finished ship will be the sum, 
goes on day by day, and hour by hour, from the time the 
keel is laid or even the ground is cleared. Nor by the pay- 
ment of wages before the ship is completed, does the master 
builder lessen either his capital or the capital of the com- 
munity, for the value of the partially completed ship stands 
in place of the value paid out in wages. There is no ad- 
vance of capital in this payment of wages, for the labor of 
the workmen during the week or month creates and renders 
to the builder more capital than is paid back to them at the 
end of the week or month, as is shown by the fact that if 
the builder were at any stage of the construction asked to 
sell a partially completed ship he would expect a profit. 

And so, when a Sutro or St. Gothard tunnel or a Suez 
canal is cut, there is no advance of capital. The tunnel or 
canal, as it is cut, becomes capital as much as the money 
spent in cutting it—or, if you please, the powder, drills, 
etc., used in the work, and the food, clothes, etc., used by 
the workmen—as is shown by the fact that the value of 
the capital stock of the company is not lessened as capital 
in these forms is gradually changed into capital in the form 
of tunnel or canal. On the contrary, it probably, and on the 
average, increases as the work progresses, just as the capi- 
tal invested in a speedier mode of production would on the 
average increase. 

And this is obvious in agriculture also. That the crea- 
tion of value does not take place all at once when the crop is 
gathered, but step by step during the whole process which 
the gathering of the crop concludes, and that no payment 


60 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


of wages in the interim lessens the farmer’s capital, is tan- 
gible enough when land is sold or rented during the proc- 
ess of production, as a plowed field will bring more than an 
unplowed field, or a field that has been sown more than one 
merely plowed. It is tangible enough when growing crops 
are sold, as is sometimes done, or where the farmer does 
not harvest himself, but lets a contract to the owner of 
harvesting machinery. It is tangible in the case of orchards 
and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring 
prices proportionate to their age. It is tangible in the case 
of horses, cattle and sheep, which increase in value as 
they grow toward maturity. And if not always tangible 
between what may be called the usual exchange points in 
production, this increase of value as surely takes place with 
every exertion of labor. Hence, where labor is rendered 
before wages are paid, the advance of capital is really made 
by labor, and is from the employed to the employer, not 
from the employer to the employed. 

‘* Yet,” it may be said, ‘‘in such cases as we have been 
considering capital 7s required!” Certainly; I do not dis- 
pute that. But it is not required in order to make advances 
to labor. It is required for quite another purpose. What 
that purpose is we may readily see. 

When wages are paid in kind— that it is to say, in wealth 
of the same species as the labor produces; as, for instance, 
if I hire men to cut wood, agreeing to give them as wages 
a portion of the wood they cut (a method sometimes 
adopted by the owners or lessees of woodland), it is evident 
that no capital is required for the payment of wages. Nor 
yet when, for the sake of mutual convenience, arising from 
the fact that a large quantity of wood can be more readily 
and more advantageously exchanged than a number of 
small quantities, I agree to pay wages in money, in- 
stead of wood, shall I need any capital, provided I can 
make the exchange of the wood for money before the 
wages are due. It is only when I cannot make such an 
exchange, or such an advantageous exchange as I desire, 
until I accumulate a large quantity of wood, that I shall 


Chap. IIT. WAGES NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 61 


need capital. Nor even then shall I need capital if I can 
make a partial or tentative exchange by borrowing on my 
wood. If I cannot, or do not choose, either to sell the 
wood or to borrow upon it, and yet wish to go ahead accu- 
mulating a large stock of wood, I shall need capital. But 
manifestly, I need this capital, not for the payment of 
wages, but for the accumulation of a stock of wood. Like- 
wise in cutting a tunnel. If the workmen were paid in 
tunnel (which, if convenient, might easily be done by pay- 
ing them in stock of the company), no capital for the pay- 
ment of wages would be required. It is only when the un- 
dertakers wish to accumulate capital in the shape of a tun- 
nel that they will need capital. To recur to our first illus- 
tration: The broker to whom I sell my silver cannot carry 
on his business without capital. But he does not need this 
capital because he makes any advance of capital to me 
when he receives my silver and hands me gold. He needs 
it because the nature of the business requires the keeping 
of a certain amount of capital on hand, in order that when 
a customer comes he may be prepared to make the exchange 
the customer desires. 

And so we shall find it in every branch of pronaenens 
Capital has never to be set aside for the payment of wages: 
when the produce of the labor for which the wages are paid 
is exchanged as soon as produced; it is only required when 
this produce is stored up, or what is to the individual the 
same thing, placed in the general current of exchanges 
without being at once drawn against—that is, sold on 
credit. But the capital thus required is not required for 
the payment of wages, nor for advances to labor, as it is 
always represented in the produce of the labor. It is never 
as an employer of labor that any producer needs capital; 
when he does need capital, it is because he is not only an 
employer of labor, but a merchant or speculator in, or an 
accumulator of, the products of labor. This is generally 
the case with employers. 


To recapitulate: The man who works for himself gets his 


62 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


wages iu the things he produces, as he produces them, and 
exchanges this value into another form whenever he sells 
the produce. The man who works for another for stipu- 
lated wages in money, works under a contract of exchange. 
He also creates his wages as he renders his labor, but he 
does not get them except at stated times, in stated amounts 
and in a different form. In performing the labor he is ad- 
vancing in exchange; when he gets bis wages the exchange 
is completed. During the time he is earning the wages he 
is advancing capital to his employer, but at no time, unless 
wages are paid before work is done, is the employer ad- 
vancing capital to him. Whether the employer who receives 
this produce in exchange for the wages, immediately re- 
exchanges it, or keeps it for awhile, no more alters the 
character of the transaction than does the final disposition 
of the product made by the ultimate receiver, who may, 
perhaps, be in another quarter of the globe and at the end 
of a series of exchanges numbering hundreds. 


OHA PIPE Risk vi; 
THE MAINTENANCE OF LABORERS NOT DRAWN FROM CAPITAL. 


But a stumbling block may yet remain, or may recur, in 
the mind of the reader. 

As the plowman cannot eat the furrow, nor a partially 
completed steam engine aid in any way in producing the 
clothes the machinist wears, have I not, in the words of 
John Stuart Mill, ‘‘forgotten that the people of a country 
are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the 
produce of present labor, but of past?’ Or, to use the 
language of a popular elementary work — that of Mrs. Faw- 
cett— have I not ‘‘ forgotten that many months must elapse 
between the sowing of the seed and the time when the 
produce of that seed is converted into a loaf of bread,” and 
that ‘‘it is, therefore, evident that laborers cannot live 
upon that which their labor is assisting to produce, but 
are maintained by that wealth which their labor, or the 
labor of others, has previously produced, which wealth is 
capital ?”’* 

The assumption made in these passages—the assump- 
tion that it is so self-evident that labor must be subsisted 
from capital that the proposition has but to be stated to 
compel recognition—runs through the whole fabric of cur- 
rent political economy. And so confidently is it held that 
the maintenance of labor is drawn from capital that 
the proposition that ‘‘ population regulates itself by the 
funds which are to employ it, and, therefore, always in- 
creases or diminishes with the increase or diminution of 
capital,’”’} is regarded as equally axiomatic, and in its turn 
made the basis of important reasoning. 


* Political Economy for Beginners, by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Chap. III, p. 25. 
+ The words quoted are Ricardo’s (Chap. II); but the idea is common in standard 
works. 


64 WAGES AND OAPITAL. Book 1. 


Yet being resolved, these propositions are seen to be, not 
self-evident, but absurd; for they involve the idea that 
labor cannot be exerted until the products of labor are 
saved—thus putting the product before the producer. 

And being examined, they will be seen to derive their 
apparent plausibility from a confusion of thought. 

I have already pointed out the fallacy, concealed by an 
erroneous definition, which underlies the proposition, that 
because food, raiment and sbelter are necessary to produc- 
tive labor, therefore industry is limited by capital. To say 
that a man must have his breakfast before going to work is 
not to say that he cannot go to work unless a capitalist fur- 
nishes him with a breakfast, for his breakfast may, and in 
point of fact in any country where there is not actual fam- 
ine will come, not from wealth set apart for the assistance 
of production, but from wealth set apart for subsistence. 
And, as has been previously shown, food, clothing, etc. —in 
short all articles of wealth — are only capital so long as they 
remain in the possession of those who propose, not to con- 
sume, but to exchange them for other commodities, or for 
productive services, and cease to be capital when they pass 
into the possession of those who will consume them; for 
in that transaction they pass from the stock of wealth held 
for the purpose of procuring other wealth, and pass into 
the stock of wealth held for purposes of gratification, irre- 
spective of whether their consumption will aid in the pro- 
duction of wealth or not. Unless this distinction is pre- 
served it is impossible to draw the line between the wealth 
that is capital and the wealth that is not capital, even by 
remitting the distinction to the ‘‘mind of the possessor,” 
as does John Stuart Mill. For men do not eat or abstain, 
wear clothes or go naked, as they propose to engage in pro- 
ductive labor or not. They eat because they are hungry, 
and wear clothes because they would be uncomfortable 
without them. Take the food on the breakfast table of a 
laborer who will work or not that day as he gets the oppor- 
tunity. IRf the distinction between capital and non-capital 
be the support of productive labor, is this food capital or 


Chap. IV. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 65 


not? It is as impossible for the laborer himself as for any 
philosopher of the Ricardo-Mill school to tell. Nor yet 
can it be told when it gets into his stomach; nor, supposin2 
that he does not get work at first, but continues the 
search, can it be told until it has passed into the blood 
and tissues. Yet the man will eat his breakfast all the 
same. 

But, though it would be logically sufficient, it is hardly 
safe to rest here and leave the argument to turn on the dis- 
tinction between wealth and capital. Norisit necessary. It 
seems to me that the proposition that present labor must be 
maintained by the produce of past labor will upon analysis 
prove to be only true in the sense that the afternoon’s labor 
must be performed by the aid of the noonday meal, or that 
before you eat the hare he must be caught and cooked. And 
this, manifestly, is not the sense in which the proposition is 
used to support the important reasoning that is made to 
hinge upon it. That sense is, that before a work which will 
not immediately result in wealth available for subsistence 
can be carried on, there must exist such a stock of subsist- 
ence as will support the laborers during the process. Let 
us see if this be true: 

The canoe which Robinson Crusoe made with such in- 
finite toil and pains was a production in which his labor 
could not yield animmediate return. But was it necessary 
that, before he commenced, he should accumulate a stock 
of food sufficient to maintain him while he felled the tree, 
hewed out the canoe, and finally launched her into the sea? 
Not at all. It was only necessary that he should devote 
part of his time to the procurement of food while he was 
devoting part of his time to the building and launching of 
the canoe. Or supposing a hundred men to be landed, 
without any stock of provisions, in a new country. Will it 
be necessary for them to accumulate a season’s stock of 
provisions before they can begin to cultivate the soil? Not 
at all. It will only be necessary that fish, game, berries, 
etc., shall be so abundant that the labor of a part of the 
hundred may suffice to furnish daily enough of these for 

4 


66 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book 1 


the maintenance of all, and that there shall be such a sense 
of mutual interest, or such a correlation of desires, as shall 
lead those who in the present get the food, to divide (ex- 
change) with those whose efforts are directed to future 
recompense. 

What is true in these cases is true in all cases. It is not 
necessary to the production of things that cannot be used 
as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized, that there 
should have been a previous production of the wealth re- 
quired for the maintenance of the laborers while the pro- 
duction is going on. It is only necessary that there should 
be, somewhere within the circle of exchange, a contempora- 
neous production of sufficient subsistence for the laborers, 
and a willingness to exchange this subsistence for the thing 
on which the labor is being bestowed. 

And as a matter of fact, is it not true, in any normal 
condition of things, that consumption is supported by con- 
temporaneous production? | 

Here is a luxurious idler, who does no productive work 
either with head or hand, but lives, we say, upon wealth 
which his father left him securely invested in government 
bonds. Does his subsistence, as a matter of fact, come 
from wealth accumulated in the past or from the produc- 
tive labor that is going on around him? On his table are 
new-laid eges, butter churned but a few days before, milk 
which the cow gave this morning, fish which twenty-four 
hours ago were swimming in the sea, meat which the 
butcher boy has just brought in time to be cooked, vege- 
tables fresh from the garden, and fruit from the orchard — 
in short, hardly anything that has not recently left the 
hand of the productive laborer (for in this category must 
be included transporters and distributors as well as those 
who are engaged in the first stages of production), and 
nothing that has been produced for any considerable length 
of time, unless it may be some bottles of old wine. What 
this man inherited from his father, and on which we say he 
lives, is not actually wealth at all, but only the power of 
commanding wealth as others produce it. And it is from 


Chap. 1V. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 67 


this contemporaneous production that his subsistence is 
drawn. 

The fifty square miles of London undoubtedly contain 
more wealth than within the same space anywhere else 
exists. Yet were productive labor in London to absolutely 
cease, within a few hours people would begin to die like 
rotten sheep, and within a few weeks, or at most a few 
months, hardly one would be left alive. For an en- 
tire suspension of productive labor would be a disaster more 
dreadful than ever yet befel a beleaguered city. It would 
not be a mere external wall of circumvallation, such as Titus 
drew around Jerusalem, which would prevent the constant 
incoming of the supplies on which a great city lives, but it 
would be the drawing of a similar wall around each house- 
hold. Imagine such a suspension of labor in any com- 
munity, and you will see how true it is that mankind really 
live from hand to mouth; that it is the daily labor of the 
community that supples the community with its daily 
bread. 

Just as the subsistence of the laborers who built the 
Pyramids was drawn not from a previously hoarded stock, 
but from the constantly recurring crops of the Nile Valley; 
just as a modern government when it undertakes a great 
work of years does not appropriate to it wealth already pro- 
duced, but wealth yet to be produced, which is taken from 
producers in taxes as the work progresses; so is it that the 
subsistence of the laborers engaged in production which 
does not directly yield subsistence, comes from the pro- 
duction of subsistence in which others are simultaneously 
engaged. 

If we trace the circle of exchange by which work done in 
tae production of a great steam engine secures to the work- 
er bread, meat, clothes and shelter, we shall find that 
though hetween the laborer on the engine and the pro- 
ducers of the bread, meat, etc., there may be a thousand 
intermediate exchanges, the transaction when reduced to 
its lowest terms, really amounts to an exchange of labor be- 
tween him’andthem. Nowthe cause which induces the ex- 


68 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I 


penditure of the labor on the engine, is evidently that some 
one who has power to give what is desired by the laborer 
on the engine wants in exchange an engine—that is to say, 
there exists a demand for an engine on the part of those 
producing bread, meat, etc., or on the part of those who are 
producing what the producers of the bread, meat, etc., 
desire. It is this demand which directs the labor of the 
machinist to the production of the engine, and hence, 
reversely, the demand of the machinist for bread, meat, 
etc., really directs an equivalent amount of labor to the 
production of these things, and thus his labor, actually 
exerted in- the production of the engine, virtually produces 
the things in which he expends his wages. 
Or, to formularize this principle: 


The demand for consumption deternvines the direction in 
which labor will be expended in production. 


This principle is so simple and obvious that it needs no 
further illustration, yet in its light all the complexities of 
our subject disappear, and we thus reach the same view of 
the real objects and rewards of labor in the intricacies of 
modern production that we gained by observing in the first 
beginnings of society the simpler forms of production and 
exchange. We see that now, as then, each laborer is en- 
deavoring to obtain by his exertions the satisfaction of his 
own desires; we see that although the minute division of 
labor assigns to each producer the production of but a small 
part, or perhaps nothing at all, of the particular things he 
labors to-get, yet, in aiding in the production of what other 
producers want, he is directing other labor to the produc- 
tion of the things he wants—in effect, producing them him- 
self. And thus, if he makes jack-knives and eats wheat, the 
wheat is really as much the produce of his labor as if he 
had grown it for himself and left wheat-growers to make 
their own jack-knives. 

We thus see how thoroughly and completely true it is, 
that in whatever is taken or consumed by laborers in return 
for labor rendered, there is no advance of capital to the 


Chap. 1V. LABORERS NOT MAINTAINED BY CAPITAL. 69 


laborers. If I have made jack-knives, and with the wages 
received have bought wheat, I have simply exchanged 
jack-knives for wheat—added jack-knives to the existing 
stock of wealth and taken wheat from it. And as the 
demand for consumption determines the direction in 
which labor will be expended in production, it cannot even 
be said, so long as the limit of wheat production has not 
been reached, that I have lessened the stock of wheat, for, 
by placing jack-knives in the exchangeable stock of wealth 
and taking wheat out, I have determined labor at the other 
end of a series of exchanges to the production of wheat, 
just as the wheat grower, by putting in wheat and demand- 
ing jack-knives, determined labor to the production of jack- 
knives, as the easiest way by which wheat could be obtained. 

And so the man who is following the plow—-though the 
crop for which he is opening the ground is not yet sown, 
and after being sown will take months to arrive at maturity 
—he is yet, by the exertion of his labor in plowing, virtu- 
ally producing the food he eats and the wages he receives. 
For, though plowing is but a part of the operation of pro- 
ducing a crop, it is a part, and as necessary a part as har- 
vesting. The doing of it is a step towards procuring a 
crop, which by the assurance which it gives of the future 
crop, sets free from the stock constantly held the subsist- 
ence and wages of the plowman, This is not merely theo- 
retically true, it is practically and literally true. At the 
proper time for plowing, let plowing cease. "Would not 
the symptoms of scarcity at once manifest themselves with- 
out waiting for the time of the harvest? Let plowing cease, 
and would not the effect at once be felt in counting-room, 
and machine shop, and factory? Would not loom and 
spindle soon stand as idle as the plow? That this would 
be so, we see in the effect which immediately follows a bad 
season. And if this would be so, is not the man who plows 
really producing his subsistence and wages as much as 
though during the day or week his labor actually resulted 
in the things for which his labor is exchanged? 

Asa matter of fact, where there is labor looking for em- 


70 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book Z. 


ployment, the want of capital does not prevent the owner 
of land which promises a crop for which there is a demand, 
from hiring it. Hither he makes an agreement to cul- 
tivate on shares, a common method in some parts of the 
United States, in which case the laborers, if they are 
without means of subsistence, will, on the strength of the 
work they are doing, obtain credit at the nearest store; or, 
if he prefers to pay wages, the farmer will himself obtain 
credit, and thus the work done in cultivation is immedi- 
ately utilized or exchanged as it isdone. If anything more 
will be used up than would be used up if the laborers were 
forced to beg instead of to work (for in any civilized coun- 
try during a normal condition of things the laborers must 
be supported anyhow), it will be the reserve capital drawn 
out by the prospect of replacement, and which is in fact re- 
placed by the work as it is done. For instance, in the 
purely agricultural districts of Southern California there 
was in 1877 a total failure of the crop, and of millions of 
sheep nothing remained but their bones. In the great San 
Joaquin Valley were many farmers without food enough to 
support their families until the next harvest time, let alone 
to support any laborers. But the rains came again in 
proper season, and these very farmers proceeded to hire 
hands to plow and to sow. For every here and there was 
a farmer who had been holding back part of his crop. As 
soon as the rains came he was anxious to sell before the 
next harvest brought lower prices, and the grain thus held 
in reserve, through the machinery of exchanges and ad- 
vances, passed to the use of the cultivators—set free, in 
effect produced, by the work done for the next crop. 

The series of exchanges which unite production and con- 
sumption may be likened to a curved pipe filled with water. 
If a quantity of water is poured in at one end, a like quan- 
tity is released at the other. It is not identically the same 
water, but is its equivalent. And so they who do the work 
of production put in as they take out—they receive in sub- 
sistence and wages but the produce of their labor. 


GNA. P TER ba:Ve. 
THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 


It may now be asked, If capital is not required for the 
payment of wages or the support of labor during produc- 
tion, what, then, are its functions? 

The previous examination has made the answer clear. 
Capital, as we have seen, consists of wealth used for the 
procurement of more wealth, as distinguished from wealth 
used for the direct satisfaction of desire; or, as I think it 
may be defined, of wealth in the course of exchange. 

Capital, therefore, increases the power of labor to pro- 
duce wealth: (1) By enabling labor to apply itself in more 
effective ways, as by digging up clams with a spade instead 
of the hand, or moving a vessel by shoveling coal into a 
furnace, instead of tugging at an oar. (2) By enabling 
labor to avail itself of the reproductive forces of nature, as 
to obtain corn by sowing it, or animals by breeding them. 
(3) By permitting the division of labor, and thus, on the 
one hand, increasing the efficiency of the human factor of 
wealth, by the utilization of special capabilities, the acqui- 
sition of skill, and the reduction of waste; and, on the other, 
calling in the powers of the natural factor at their highest, 
by taking adyantage of the diversities of soil, climate and 
situation, so as to obtain each particular species of wealth 
where nature is most favorable to its production. 

Capital does not supply the materials which labor works 
up into wealth, as is erroneously taught; the materials of 
wealth are supplied by nature. But such materials par- 
tially worked up and in the course of exchange are capital. 

Capital does not supply or advance wages, as is erro- 
neously taught. Wages are that part of the produce of his 
labor obtained by the laborer, 


72 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


Capital does not maintain laborers during the progress 
of their work, as is erroneously taught. Laborers are main- 
tained by their labor, the man who produces, in whole or 
in part, anything that will exchange for articles of main- 
tenance, virtually producing that maintenance. 

Capital, therefore, does not limit industry, as is erro- 
neously taught, the only limit to industry being the access 
to natural material. But capital may limit the form of in- 
dustry and the productiveness of industry, by limiting the 
use of tools-and the division of labor. 

That capital may limit the form of industry is clear. 
Without the factory, there could-be no factory operatives; 
without the sewing machine, no machine sewing; without 
the plow, no plowman; and without a great capital engaged 
in exchange, industry could not take the many special 
forms which are concerned with exchanges. It is alsd as 
clear that the want of tools must greatly limit the produc- 
tiveness of industry. If the farmer must use the spade be- 
cause he has not capital enough for a plow, the sickle in- 
stead of the reaping machine, the flail instead of the thresh- 
er; if the machinist must rely upon the chisel for cutting 
iron; the weaver on the hand loom, and so on, the produc- 
tiveness of industry cannot be a tithe of what it is when 
aided by capital in the shape of the best tools now in use. 
Nor could the division of labor go further than the very 
rudest and almost imperceptible beginnings, nor the ex- 
changes which make it possible extend beyond the nearest 
neighbors, unless a portion of the things produced were 
constantly kept in stock or in transitu. Even the pursuits — 
of hunting, fishing, gathering nuts, and making weapons, 
could not be specialized so that an individual could devote 
himself to any one, unless some part of what was procured 
by each was reserved from immediate consumption, so that 
he who devoted himself to the procurement of things of 
one kind could obtain the others as he wanted them, and 
could make the good luck of one diy supply the shortcom- 
ings of the next. While to permit the minute subdivision 
of labor that is characteristic cf and necessary to high civil- 


Chap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL. 713 


ization, a great amount of wealth of all descriptions must 
be constantly kept in stock or in transitu. To enable the 
resident of a civilized community to exchange his labor at 
option with the labor of those around him and with the 
labor of men in the most remote parts of the globe, there 
must be stocks of goods in warehouses, in stores, in the 
holds of ships, and in railway cars, just as to enable the 
denizen of a great city to draw at will a cupfull of water, 
there must be thousands of millions of gallons stored in 
reservoirs and moving through miles of pipe. 

But to say that capital may hmit the form of industry or 
the productiveness of industry is avery different thing from 
saying that capital hmits industry. For the dictum of the 
current political economy that ‘‘ capital limits industry,” 
means not that capital limits the form of labor or the pro- 
ductiveness of labor, but that it limits the exertion of 
labor. This proposition derives its plausibility from the 
assumption that capital supplies labor with materials and 
maintenance—an assumption that we have seen to be un- 
founded, and which is indeed transparently preposterous 
the moment it is remembered that capital is produced by 
labor, and hence that there must be labor before there can 
be capital. Capital may limit the form of industry and the 
productiveness of industry; but this is not to say that there 
could be no industry without capital, any more than it is to 
say that without the power loom there could be no weaving; 
without the sewing machine no sewing; no cultivation with- 
out the plow; or, that in a community of one, like that of 
Robinson Crusoe, there could be no labor because there 
could be no exchange. 

And to say that capital may limit the form and produc- 
tiveness of industry is a different thing from saying that 
capital does. For the cases in which it can be truly said 
that the form or productiveness of the industry of a com- 
munity is limited by its capital, will, I think, appear upon 
examination to be more theoretical than real. It is evident 
that in such a country as Mexico or Tunis the larger and 
more general use of capital would greatly change the forms 


74 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


of industry and enormously inctease its productiveness; 
and it is often said of such countries, that they need capital 
for the development of their resources. But is there not 
something back of this—a want which includes the want of 
capital? Is it not the rapacity and abuses of government, 
the insecurity of property, the ignorance and prejudice of 
the people, that prevent the accumulation and use of capi- 
tal? Is not the real limitation in these things, and not in 
the want of capital, which would not be used even if placed 
there? We can, of course, imagine a community in which 
the want of capital would be the only obstacle to an in- 
creased productiveness of labor, but it is only by imagin- 
ing a conjunction of conditions that seldom, if ever, occurs, 
except by accident or as a passing phase. A community in 
which capital has been swept away by war, conflagration, 
or convulsion of nature, and, possibly, a community com- 
posed of civilized people just settled in a new land, seem to 
me to furnish the only examples. Yet how quickly the 
capital habitually used is reproduced in a community that 
has been swept by war, has long been noticed, while 
the rapid production of the capital it can, or is disposed to 
use, is equally noticeable in the case of a new community. 

I am unable to think of any other than such rare and 
passing conditions in which the productiveness of labor is 
really limited by the want of capital. For, although there 
may be in a community individuals who from want of capi- 
tal cannot apply their labor as efficiently as they would; yet 
so long as there is a sufficiency of capital in the community 
at large, the real limitation is not the want of capital, but 
the want of its proper distribution. If bad government 
rob the laborer of his capital, if unjust laws take from the 
producer the wealth with which he would assist production, 
and hand it over to those who are mere pensioners upon in- 
dustry, the real limitation to the effectiveness of labor is in 
misgovernment, and not in want of capital. And so of ignor- 
ance, or custom, or other conditions which prevent the use 
of capital. It is they, not the want of capital, that really 
constitute the limitation. To give a circular saw toa Terra 


Uhap. V. THE REAL FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL, 75 


del Fuegan, a locomotive to a Bedouin Arab, or a sewing 
machine to a Flathead squaw, would not be to add to the 
efficiency of their labor. Neither does it seem possible by 
giving anything else to add to their capital, for any wealth 
beyond what they had been accustomed to use as capital 
would be consumed or suffered to waste. Itis not the want 
of seeds and tools that keeps the Apache and the Sioux from 
- cultivating the soil. If provided with seeds and tools they 
would not use them productively unless at the same time 
restrained from wandering and taught to cultivate the soil. 
If all the capital of a London were given them in their 
present condition, it would simply cease to be capital, for 
they would only use productively such infinitesimal part as 
might assist in the chase, and would not even use that until 
all the edible part of the stock thus showered upon them had 
been consumed. Yet such capital as they do want, they 
manage to acquire, and in some forms in spite of the great- 
est difficulties. These wild tribes hunt and fight with the 
best weapons that American and English factories produce, 
keeping up with the latest improvements. It is only as 
they became civilized that they would care for such other 
capital as the civilized state requires, or that it would be of 
any use to them. 

In the reign of George IV., some returning missionaries 
took with them to England a New Zealand chief called 
Hongi. His noble appearance and beautiful tatooing attract- 
ed much attention, and when about to return to his people 
he was presented by the monarch and some of the religious 
societies with a considerable stock of tools, agricultural 
instruments, and seeds. The grateful New Zealander did 
use this capital in the production of food, but it was in a 
manner of which his English entertainers little dreamed. 
In Sydney, on his way back, he exchanged it all for arms 
and ammunition, with which, on getting home, he began war 
against another tribe with such success that on the first 
battle field three hundred of his prisoners were cooked and 
eaten, Hongi having preluded the main repast by scooping 
out and swallowing the eyes and sucking the warm blood 


76 WAGES AND CAPITAL. Book I. 


of his mortally wounded adversary, the opposing chief.* 
But now that their once constant wars have ceased, 
and the remnant of the Maoris have largely adopted Euro- 
pean habits, there are among them manv who have and use 
considerable amounts of capital. 

Likewise it would be a mistake to attribute the simple 
modes of production and exchange which are resorted to in 
new communities solely to a want of capital. These modes, 
which require little capital, are in themselves rude and in- 
efficient, but when the conditions of such communities are 
considered, they will be found in reality the most effective. 
A great factory with all the latest improvements, is the 
most efficient instrument that has yet been devised for 
turning wool or cotton into cloth, but only so where large 
quantities are to be made. The cloth required for a little 
village could be made with far less labor by the spinning 
wheel and hand loom. A perfecting press will, for each 
man required, print many thousand impressions while a man 
and a boy would be printing a hundred with a Stanhope 
or Franklin press; yet to work off the small edition of a 
country newspaper the old-fashioned press is by far the 
most efficient machine. To occasionally carry two or three 
passengers, a canoe is a betier instrument than a steamboat ; 
a few sacks of flour can be transported with less expendi- 
ture of labor by a pack horse than by a railroad train ; to 
put a great stock of goods into a cross-roads store in the 
backwoods would be but to waste capital. And, generally, 
it will be found that the rude devices of production and ex- 
change which obtain among the sparse populations of new 
countries, result not so much from the want of capital as 
from inability to profitably employ it. 

As, no matter how much water is poured in, there can 
never be in a bucket more than a bucketful, so no greater 
amount of wealth will be used as capital than is required 
by the machinery of production and exchange that under 
all the existing conditions— intelligence, habit, security, 


* New Zealand andits Inhabitants, Rev, Richard Taylor, London, 1855. Chap. XXI. 


Chap. ?. RECAPITULATION, 77 


density of population, etc.—best suit the people. And I 
am inclined to think that as a general rule this amount will 
be had —that the social organism secretes, as it were, the 
necessary amount of capital just as the human organism 
in a healthy condition secretes the requisite fat. 

But whether the amount of capital ever does limit the 
productiveness of industry, and thus fix a maximum which 
wages cannot exceed, it is evident that it is not from any 
scarcity of capital that the poverty of the masses in ciy- 
ilized countries proceeds. For not only do wages nowhere 
reach the limit fixed by the productiveness of industry, but 
wages are relatively the lowest where capital is most abund-— 
ant. The tools and machinery of production are in all the 
most progressive countries evidently in excess of the use 
made of them, and any prospect of remunerative employ- 
ment brings out more than the capitalneeded. The bucket 
is not only full; it is overflowing. So evident is this, 
that not only among the ignorant, but by men of high eco- 
nomic reputation, is industrial depression attributed to the 
abundance of machinery and the accumulation of capital; 
and war, which is the destruction of capital, is looked upon 
as the cause of brisk trade and high wages—an idea 
strangely enough, so great is the confusion of thought on 
such matters, countenanced by many who hold that capital 
employs labor and pays wages. 


Our purpose in this inquiry is to solve the problem to 
which so many self-contradictory answers are given. In as- 
certaining clearly what capital really is and what capital 
really does, we have made the first, and an all-important 
step. But itis only a first step. Let us recapitulate and 
proceed. 

We have seen that the current theory that wages depend 
upon the ratio between the number of laborers and the 
amount of capital devoted to the employment of labor is 
inconsistent with the general fact that wages and interest 
de not rise and fall inversely, but conjointly. 


78 WAGES -AND CAPITAL. Book 1 


This discrepancy having led us to an examination of the 
grounds of the theory, we have seen, further, that, contrary 
to the current idea, wages are not drawn from capital at 
all, but come directly from the produce of the labor for 
which they are paid. We have seen that capital does not 
advance wages or subsist laborers, but that its functions 
are to assist labor in production with tools, seed, etc., and 
with the wealth required to carry on exchanges. 

We are thus irresistibly led to practical conclusions so 
important as to amply justify the pains taken to make sure 
of them. 

For if wages are drawn, not from capital, but from the 
produce of labor, the current theories as to the relations of 
capital and labor are invalid, and all remedies, whether 
proposed by professors of political economy or working- 
men, which look to the alleviation of poverty either by the 
increase of capital or the restriction of the number of la- 
borers or the efficiency of their work, must be condemned. 

If each laborer in performing the labor really creates the 
fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot 
be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on the con- 
trary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases with 
the number of laborers, the more laborers, other things 
being equal, the higher should wages be. 

But this necessary proviso, ‘‘ other things being equal,” 
brings us to a question which must be considered and dis- 
posed of before we can further proceed. That question is, 
Do the productive powers of nature tend to diminish with 
the increasing drafts made upon them by increasing popu- 
lation? 


IsVONONAC “AGE 


POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. 


CHAPTER I.—THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, JTS GENESIS AND SUPPORT. 
CHAPTER -II.—INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 

CHAPTER III.—INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 

CHAPTER IV.—DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY 


Are God and Nature then at strife, 
That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems, 
So eareless of the single life. 
—Tennyson. 


CHAPTER 1. 
THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, ITS GENESIS AND SUPPORT. 


Behind the theory we have been considering lies a theory 
we have yet to consider. The current doctrine as to the 
derivation and law of wages finds its strongest support ina 
doctrine as generally accepted — the doctrine to which Mal- 
thus has given his name—that population naturally tends 
to increase faster than subsistence. These two doctrines, 
fitting in with each other, frame the answer which the cur- 
rent political economy gives to the great problem we are 
endeavoring to solve. 

In what has preceded, the current doctrine that wages are 
determined by the ratio between capital and laborers has, 
I think, been shown to be so utterly baseless as to excite 
surprise as to how it could so generally and so long obtain. 
It is not to be wondered at that such a theory should have 
arisen in a state of society where the great body of laborers 
seem to depend for employment and wages upon a separate 
class of capitalists, nor yet that under these conditions it 
should have maintained itself among the masses of men, 
who rarely take the trouble to separate the real from the 
apparent. But itis surprising that a theory which on ex- 
amination appears to be so groundless could have been suc- 
cessively accepted by so many acute thinkers as have during 
the present century devoted their powers to the elucidation - 
and development of the science of political economy, 

The explanation of this otherwise unaccountable fact is 
to be found in the general acceptance of the Malthusian 
theory. The current theory of wages has never been 
fairly put upon its trial, because, backed by the Malthusian 
theory, it has seemed in the minds of political economists a 
self-evident truth. These two theories mutually blend with, 


82 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 


strengthen, and defend each other, while they both derive 
additional support from a principle brought prominently 
forward in the discussions of the theory of rent—viz., that 
past a certain point the application of capital and labor to 
land yields a diminishing return. Together they give 
such an explanation of the phenomena presented in a 
highly organized and advancing society as seems to fit all 
the facts, and which has thus prevented closer investiga- 
tion. 

Which of these two theories is entitled to historical pre- 
cedence itis hard to say. Thetheory of population was not 
formulated in such a way as to give it the standing of a 
scientific dogma until after that had been done for the 
theory of wages. But they naturally spring up and grow 
with each other, and were both held in a form more or less 
crude long prior to any attempt to construct a system of 
political economy. Itis evident, from several passages, that 
though he never fully developed it, the Malthusian theory 
was in rudimentary form present in the mind of Adam 
Smith, and to this, it seems to me, must be largely due the 
misdirection which on the subject of wages his speculations 


took. But, however this may be, so closely are the two 


theories connected, so completely do they complement each 
other, that Buckle, reviewing the history of the development 
of political economy in his ‘‘ Examination of the Scotch 
Intellect during the HKighteenth Century,” attributes mainly 
to Malthus the honor of “decisively proving” the current 
theory of wages by advancing the current theory of the 
pressure of population upon subsistence. He says in his 
*‘ History of Civilization in England,” Vol. 3, Chap. 5: 


“*Scarcely had the Eighteenth Century passed away when it was 
decisively proved that the reward of labor depends solely on two 
things; namely, the magnitude of that national fund out of which all 
labor is paid, and the number of laborers among whom the fund is to 
be divided. This vast step in our knowledge is due, mainly, though 
not entirely, to Malthus, whose work on population, besides marking 
an epoch in the history of speculative thought, has already produced 
considerable practical results, and will probably give rise to others 
more considerable still. It was published in 1798; so that Adam 
Smith, who died in 1790, missed what to him would have been the in- 
tense pleasure of seeing how, in it, his own views were expanded rath- 


Chap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 83 


er than corrected. Indeed, it is certain that without Smith there 
would have been no Malthus; that is, unless Smith had laid the foun- 
dation, Malthus could not have raised the superstructure.’’ 


The famous doctrine which ever since its enunciation has 
so powerfully influenced thought, not alone in the province 
of political economy, but in regions of even higher specu- 
lation, was formulated by Malthus in the proposition that 
(as shown by the growth of the North American colonies) 
the natural tendency of population is to double itself at 
least every twenty-five years, thus increasing in a geomet- 
rical ratio, while the subsistence that can be obtained from 
land ‘‘ under circumstances the most favorable to human 
industry could not possibly be made to increase faster than 
in an arithmetical ratio, or by an addition every twenty-five 
years of a quantity equal to what it at present produces.” 
‘‘'The necessary effects of these two different rates of in- 
crease, when brought together,’ Mr. Malthus naively goes 
on to say, ‘‘ will be very striking.” And thus (Chap. I) 
he brings them together: 


‘* Let us call the population of this island eleven millions; and sup- 
pose the present produce equal to the easy support of such a number. 
In the first twenty-five years the population would be twenty-two mil- 
lions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence 
would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years the 
population would be forty-four millions, and the means of subsistence 
only equal to the support of thirty-three millions. In the next period 
the population would be equal to eighty-eight millions, and the means 
of subsistence just equal to the support of half that number. And at 
the conclusion of the first century, the population would be a hundred 
and seventy-six millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to 
the support of fifty-five millions; leaving a population of a hundred 
and twenty-one millions totally unprovided for. 

‘¢ Taking the whole earth instead of this island, emigration would of 
course be excluded; and supposing the present population equal to a 
thousand millions, the human species would increase as the numbers 
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 
9. In two centuries the population would be to the means of subsist- 
ence as 256 to 9; in three centuries, 4,096 to 13, and in two thousand 
years the difference would be almost incalculable.’’ 


Such a result is of course prevented by the physical fact 
that no more people can exist than can find subsistence, 
and hence Malthus’ conclusion is, that this tendency of 
population to indefinite increase must be held back either 
by moral restraint upon the reproductive faculty, or by the 


84 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL. 


various causes which increase mortality, which he resolves 
into vice and misery. Such causes as prevent propagation 
he styles the preventive check; such causes as increase 
mortality he styles the positive check. This is the famous 
Malthusian doctrine, as promulgated by Malthus himself 
in the ‘‘ Essay on Population.” 

It is not worth while to dwell upon the fallacy involved 
in the assumption of geometrical and arithmetical rates of 
increase, a play upon proportions which hardly rises to the 
dignity of that in the familiar puzzle of the hare and the 
tortoise, in which the hare is made to chase the tortoise 
through all eternity without coming up with him. For 
this assumption is not necessary to the Malthusian doctrine, 
or at least is expressly repudiated by some of those who 
fully accept that doctrine ; as, for instance, John Stuart 
Mill, who speaks of it as ‘an unlucky attempt to give pre- 
cision to things which do not admit of it, which every per- 
son capable of reasoning must see is wholly superfluous 
to the argument.” * The essence of the Malthusian doctrine 
is, that population tends to increase faster than the power 
of providing food, and whether this difference be stated as 
a geometrical ratio for population and an arithmetical ratio 
for subsistence, as by Malthus; or as a constant ratio for 
population and a diminishing ratio for subsistence, as by 
Mill, is only a matter of statement. ‘The vital point, on 
which both agree, is, to use the words of Malthus, ‘‘ that 
there is a natural tendency and constant effort in popula- 
tion to increase beyond the means of subsistence.” 

The Malthusian doctrine, as at present held, may be thus 
stated in its strongest and least objectionable form : 

That population, constantly tending to increase, must, 
when unrestrained, ultimately press against the limits of 
subsistence, not as against a fixed, but as against an elastic 
barrier, which makes the procurement of subsistence pro- 


* Principles of Political Economy, Book IT, Chap. IX, Sec. VI.—Yet notwithstand- 
ing what Mill says, it is clear that Malthus himself lays great stress upon his geomet- 
rical and arithmetical ratios, and it is also probable that it is to these ratios that Mal- 
thus is largely indebted for his fame, as they supplied one of those high-sounding 
formulas that with many people carry far more weight than the clearest reasoning. 


Chap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 85 


gressively more and more difficult. And thus, wherever 
reproduction has had time to assert its power, and is ua- 
checked by prudence, there must exist that degree of want 
which will keep population within the bounds of subsist- 
ence. 

Although in reality not more repugnant to the sense of 
harmonious adaptation by creative beneficence and wisdom 
than the complacent no-theory which throws the responsi- 
bility for poverty and its concomitants upon the inscrutable 
decrees of Providence, without attempting to trace them, 
this theory, in avowedly making vice and suffering the nec- 
essary results of a natural instinct with which are linked 
the purest and sweetest affections, comes rudely in collision 
with ideas deeply rooted in the human mind, and it was, as 
soon as formally promulgated, fought with a bitterness in 
which zeal was often more manifest than logic. But it has 
triumphantly withstood the ordeal, and in spite of the refu- 
tations of the Godwins, the denunciations of the Cobbetts, 
and all the shafts that argument, sarcasm, ridicule, and 
sentiment could direct against it, to-day it stands in the 
world of thought as an accepted truth, which compels the 
recognition even of those who would fain disbelieve it. 

The causes of its triumph, the sources of its strength, 
are not obscure. Seemingly backed by an indisputable 
arithmetical truth—that a continuously increasing popula- 
tion must eventually exceed the capacity of the earth to 
furnish food or even standing room, the Malthusian theory 
is supported by analogies in the animal and vegetable king- 
doms, where life everywhere beats wastefully against the 
barriers that hold its different species in check—analogies 
to which the course of modern thought, in leveling distinc- 
tions between different forms of life, has given a greater and 
greater weight; and it is apparently corroborated by many 
obvious facts, such as the prevalence of poverty, vice, and 
misery amid dense populations; the general effect of ma- 
terial progress in increasing population without relieving 
pauperism ; the rapid growth of numbers in newly settled 
countries, and the evident retardation of increase in more 


86 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book I1. 


° 


densely settled countries by the mortality among the class 
condemned to want. 

The Malthusian theory furnishes a general principle 
which accounts for these and similar facts, and accounts for 
them in a way which harmonizes with the doctrine that 
wages are drawn from capital, and with all the principles 
that are deduced from it. According to the current doc- 
trine of wages, wages fall as increase in the number of 
laborers necessitates a more minute division of capital ; ac- 
cording to the Malthusian theory, poverty appears as increase 
in population necessitates the more minute division of sub- 
sistence. It requires but the identification of capital with 
subsistence, and number of laborers with population, an 
identification made in the current treatises on political econ- 
omy, where the terms are often converted, to make the two 
propositions as identical formally as they are substantially.* 
And thus it is, as stated by Buckle in the passage previously 
quoted, that the theory of population advanced by Malthus 
has appeared to decisively prove the theory of wages ad- 
vanced by Smith. 

Ricardo, who a few years subsequent to the publication 
of the ‘‘ Essay on Population” corrected the mistake into 
which Smith had fallen as to the nature and cause of rent, 
furnished the Malthusian theory an additional support by 
calling attention to the fact that rent would increase as the 
necessities of increasing population forced cultivation to 
less and less productive lands, or to less and less pro- 
ductive points on the same lands, and thus explaining the 
rise of rent. In this way was formed, as it were, a triple 
combination, by which the Malthusian theory has been 
buttressed on both sides—the previously received doctrine 
of wages and the subsequently received doctrine of rent 
exhibiting in this view but special examples of the opera- 
tion of the general principle to which the name of Malthus 
has been attached—the fall in wages and the rise in rents 


* The effect of the Malthusian doctrine upon the definitions of capital may, I think, 
be seen by comparing (see pp. 29, 30) the definition of Smith, who wrote prior to Mal- 
thus, with the definitions of Ricardo, McCulloch and Mill, who wrote subsequently. 


Chap. 1. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 87 


which come with increasing population being but modes in 
which the pressure of population upon subsistence shows 
itself. 

Thus taking its place in the very frame work of political 
economy (for the science as currently accepted has under- 
gone no material change or improvement since the time of 
Ricardo, though in some minor points it has been cleared 
and illustrated), the Malthusian theory, though repugnant 
to sentiments before alluded to, is not repugnant to other 
ideas, which, in older countries at least, generally prevail 
among the working classes ; but, on the contrary, like the 
theory of wages by which it is supported and in turn sup- 
ports, it harmonizes with them. To the mechanic or oper- 
ative the cause of low wages and of the inability to get 
employment is obviously the competition caused by the 
pressure of numbers, and in the squalid abodes of poverty 
what seems clearer than that there are too many people? 

But the great cause of the triumph of this theory is, 
that, instead of menacing any vested right or antagonizing 
any powerful interest, it is eminently soothing and re- 
assuring to the classes who, wielding the power of wealth, 
largely dominate thought. At a time when old supports 
were falling away, it came to the rescue of the special privi- 
leges by which afew monopolize so much of the good things 
of this world, proclaiming a natural cause for the want and 
misery which, if attributed to political institutions, must 
condemn every government under which they exist. The 
‘‘Hssay on Population” was avowedly a reply to William 
Godwin’s ‘‘ Inquiry concerning Political Justice,” a work 
asserting the principle of human equality; and its purpose 
was to justify existing inequality by shifting the responsi- 
bility for it from human institutions to the laws of the 
Creator. There was nothing new in this, for Wallace, 
nearly forty years before, had brought forward the danger of 
excessive multiplication as the answer to the demands of 
justico for an equal distribution of wealth ; but the cireum- 
stances of the times were such as to make the same idea, 
when brought forward by Malthus, peculiarly grateful to a 


88 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IT. 


powerful class, in whom an intense fear of any questioning 
of the existing state of things had been generated by the 
outburst of the French Revolution. 

Now, as then, the Malthusian doctrine parries the demand 
for reform, and shelters selfishness from question and from 
conscience by the interposition of an inevitable necessity. 
It furnishes a philosoply by which Dives as he feasts can 
shut out the image of Lazarus who faints with hunger at 
his door; by which wealth may with a good conscience but- 
ton up its pocket when poverty asks an alms, and the rich 
Christian bend on Sundays in a nicely upholstered pew to 
implore the good gifts of the All Father without any feel- 
ing of responsibility for the squalid misery that is festering 
but a square away. For poverty, want, and starvation are 
by this theory not chargeable either to individual greed or 
to social mal-adjustments ; they are the inevitable results 
of universal laws, with which, if it were not impious, it were 
as hopeless to quarrel as with the law of gravitation. In 
this view, he who in the midst of want has accumulated 
wealth, has but fenced in a little oasis from the driving sand 
which else would have overwhelmed it. He has gained for 
himself, but has hurt nobody. And even if the rich were 
to literally obey the injunctions of Christ and divide their 
wealth among the poor, nothing would be gained. Popu- 
lation would be increased, only to press again upon the 
limits of subsistence or capital, and the equality that would 
be produced would be but the equality of common misery. 
And thus reforms which would interfere with the interests 
of any powerful class are discouraged as hopeless. As the 
moral law forbids any forestalling of the methods by which 
the natural law gets rid of surplus population and holds in 
check a tendency to increase potent enough to pack the 
surface of the globe with human beings as sardines are 
packed in a box, nothing can really be done, either by indi- 
vidual or by combined effort, to extirpate poverty, save to 
trust to the efficacy of education and preach the necessity 
of prudence. 

A theory that, faliag in with the habits of thought of 


Chap. I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 8Y 


the poorer classes, thus justifies the greed of the rich and 
the selfishness of the powerful, will spread quickly and 
strike its roots deep. This has been the case with the 
theory advanced by Malthus. 

And of late years the Malthusian theory has received new 
support in the rapid change of ideas as to the origin of man 
and the genesis of species. That Buckle was right in say- 
ing that the promulgation of the Malthusian theory marked 
an epoch in the history of speculative thought could, it 
seems to me, be easily shown ; yet to trace its influence in 
the higher domains of philosophy (of which Buckle’s own 
work is an example) would, though extremely interesting, 
carry us beyond the scope of this investigation. But how 
much be reflex and how much original, the support which 
is given to the Malthusian theory by the new philosophy of 
development, now rapidly spreading in every direction, 
must be noted in any estimate of the sources from which this 
theory derives its present strength. As in political econ- 
omy, the support received from the doctrine of wages and 
the doctrine of rent combined to raise the Malthusian the- 
ory to the rank of a central truth, so the extension of 
similar ideas to the development of life in all its forms has 
the effect of giving it a still higher and more impregnable 
position. Agassiz, who, to the day of his death, was a stren- 
uous opponent of the new philosophy, spoke of Darwinism 
as ‘‘Malthus all over,’* and Darwin himself says the 
struggle for existence ‘‘is the doctrine of Malthus applied 
with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable 
kingdoms.’’ t 

It does not, however, seem to me exactly correct to say 
that the theory of development by natural selection or sur- 
vival of the fittest, is extended Malthusianism, for the doc- 
trine of Malthus did not originally and does not necessarily 
involve the idea of progression. But this was soon added 
to it. McCulloch{ attributes to the ‘‘principle of in- 


* Address before Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1872. Report U. 8. De 
partment of Agriculture, 1873. 

¢ Origin of Species, Chap. III. 

t Note IV. to Wealth of Nations. 


5 


90 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 


crease” social improvement and the progress of the arts, 
and declares that the poverty that it engenders acts as a 
powerful stimulus to the development of industry, the 
extension of science and the accumulation of wealth by the 
upper and middle classes, without which stimulus society 
would quickly sink into apathy and decay. What is this 
but the recognition in regard to human society of the de- 
veloping effects of the ‘‘ struggle for existence” and ‘‘sur- 
vival of the fittest,” which we are now told on the authority 
of natural science have been the means which Nature has 
employed to bring forth all the infinitely diversified and 
wonderfully adapted forms which the teeming life of the 
globe assumes? What isit but the recognition of the force, 
which, seemingly cruel and remorseless, has yet in the 
course of unnumbered ages developed the higher from the 
lower type, differentiated the man and the monkey, and 
made the Nineteenth Century succeed the age of stone ? 
Thus commended and seemingly proved, thus linked and 
buttressed, the Malthusian theory—the doctrine that pov- 
erty is due to the pressure of population against subsistence, 
or, to put it in its other form, the doctrine that the ten- 
dency to increase in the number of laborers must always 
tend to reduce wages to the minimum on which laborers 
can reproduce—is now generally accepted as an unques- 
tionable truth, in the ight of which social phenomena are 
to be explained, just as for ages the phenomena of the side- 
real heavens were explained upon the supposition of the 
fixity of the earth, or the facts of geology upon that of the 
literal inspiration of the Mosaic record. If authority were 
alone to be considered, to formally deny this doctrine would 
require almost as much audacity as that of the colored 
preacher who recently started out on a crusade against the 
opinion that the earth moves around the sun, for in one 
form or another, the Malthusian doctrine has received in 
the intellectual world an almost universal indorsement, and 
in the best as in the most common literature of the day 
may be seen cropping out in every direction Itis endorsed 
by economists and by statesmen, by historians and by nat- 


Chap. I. THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 9] 


ural investigators; by social science congresses and by 
trade unions; by churchmen and by materialists ; by con- 
servatives of the strictest sect and by the most radical of 
radicals. It is held and habitually reasoned from by many 
who never heard of Malthus and who have not the slightest 
idea of what his theory is. 

Nevertheless, as the grounds of the current theory of 
wages have vanished when subjected to a candid examina- 
tion, so, do I believe, will vanish the grounds of this, its 
twin. In proving that wages are not drawn from capital 
we have raised this Antzus from the earth. 


O HeASP rT Ee Rails 


INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 


The general acceptance of the Malthusian theory and the 
high authority by which it is endorsed, have seemed to me 
to make it expedient to review its grounds and the causes 
which have conspired to give it such a dominating influ- 
ence in the discussion of social questions. 

But when we subject the theory itself to the test of 
straightforward analysis, it will, I think, be found as utterly 
untenable as the current theory of wages. 

In the first place, the facts which are marshaled in sup- 
port of this theory do not prove it, and the analogies do 
not countenance it. 

And, in the second place, there are facts which conclu- 
sively disprove it. 

I go to the heart of the matter in saying that there is no 
warrant, either in experience or analogy, for the assumption 
that there is any tendency in population to increase faster 
than subsistence. The facts cited to show this simply show 
that where, owing to the sparseness of population, as in 
new countries, or where, owing to the unequal distribution 
of wealth, as among the poorer classes in old countries, 
human life is occupied with the physical necessities of 
existence, the tendency to reproduce is at a rate which 
would, were it to go on unchecked, some time exceed sub- 
sistence. But itis not a legitimate inference from this, that 
the tendency to reproduce would show itself.in the same 
force where population was sufficiently dense and wealth 
distributed with sufficient evenness to lift a whole commu- 
nity above the necessity of devoting their energies to a 
struggle for mere existence. Nor can it be assumed that 
the tendency to reproduce, by causing poverty, must pre- 


Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 93 


vent the existence of such a community; for this, mani- 
festly, would be assuming the very point at issue, and rea- 
soning in a circle. And even if it be admitted that the 
tendency to multiply must ultimately produce poverty, it 
cannot from this alone be predicated of existing poverty 
that it is due to this cause, until it be shown that there are 
no other causes which can account for it—a thing in the 
present state of government, laws, and customs, manifestly 
impossible. 

This is abundantly shown in the ‘‘ Essay on Population” 
itself. This famous book, which is much oftener spoken 
of than read, is still well worth perusal, if only as a literary 
curiosity. The contrast between the merits of the book 
itself and the effect it has produced, or is at least credited 
with (for though Sir James Stewart, Mr. Townsend, and 
others, share with Malthus the glory of discovering ‘‘ the 
principle of population,” it was the publication of the 
‘« Essay on Population”’ that brought it prominently for- 
ward), is, it seems to me, one of the most remarkable 
things in the history of literature; and it is easy to under- 
stand how Godwin, whose ‘‘ Political Justice” provoked 
the ‘‘ Essay on Population,” should until his old age have 
disdained a reply. It begins with the assumption that 
population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, while 
subsistence can at best be made to increase only in an 
arithmetical ratio—an assumption just as valid, and no more 
so, than it would be, from the fact that a puppy doubled the 
length of his tail while he added so many pounds to his 
weight, to assert a geometric progression of tail and an 
arithmetical progression of weight. And, the inference 
from the assumption is just such as Swift in satire might 
have credited to the savans of a previously dogless island, 
who, by bringing these two ratios together, might de- 
duce the very ‘‘ striking consequence” that by the time 
the dog grew to a weight of fifty pounds his tail would be 
‘over a mile long, and extremely difficult to wag, and hence 
recommend the prudential check of a bandage as the only 
alternative to the positive check of constant amputations. 


94 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 


Commencing with such an absurdity, the essay includes 
a long argument for the imposition of a duty on the im- 
portation, and the payment of a bounty for the exportation 
of corn, an idea that has long since been sent to the limbo 
of exploded fallacies. And it is marked throughout the 
argumentative portions by passages which show on the 
part of the reverend gentleman the most ridiculous incae 
pacity for logical thought—as, for instance, that if wages 
were to be increased from eighteen pence or two shillings 
per day to five shillings, meat would necessarily increase in 
price from eight or nine pence to two or three shillings per 
pound, and the condition of the laboring classes would 
therefore not be improved, a statement to which I can 
think of no parallel so close as a proposition I once heard a 
certain printer gravely advance—that because an author, 
whom he had known, was forty years old when he was 
twenty, the author must now be eighty years old because 
he (the printer) was forty. This confusion of thought does 
not merely crop out here and there; it characterizes the 
whole work.* The main body of the book is taken up with 
what is in reality a refutation of the theory which the book 
advances, for Malthus’ review of what he calls the positive 
checks to population is simply the showing that the results 
which he attributes to over-population actually arise from 
other causes. Of all the cases cited, and pretty much the 
whole globe is passed over in the survey, in which vice and 
misery check increase by hmiting marriages or shortening 
the term of human life, there is not a single case in which 
the vice and misery can be traced to an actual increase in the 
number of mouths over the power of the accompanying 
hands to feed them ; but in every case the vice and misery 
are shown to spring either from unsocial ignorance and 

* Malthus’ other works, though written after he became famous, made no mark, and 
are treated with contempt even by those who find in the Essay a great discovery. The 
Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, though fully accepting the Malthusian theory, 
says of Malthus’ Political Economy: ‘It is very ill arranged, and is in no respect either 
a practical or a scientific exposition of the subject. I% isin great part occupied with an 
examination of parts of Mr. Ricardo’s peculiar doctrines, and with an inquiry into the 
nature and causes of value. Nothing, however, can be more unsatisfactory than these 
discussions. In truth Mr. Malthus never had any clear or accurate perception of Mr. 


Ricardo’s theories, or of the principles which determine the value in exchange of dif. 
ferent articles.” 


Chap. LL. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 95 


rapacity, or from bad government, unjust laws or destructive 
warfare. 

Nor what Malthus failed to show has any one since him 
shown. The globe may be surveyed and history may be 
reviewed in vain for any instance of a considerable coun- 
try* in which poverty and want can be fairly attrib- 
uted to the pressure of an increasing population. What- 
ever be the possible dangers involved in the power of 
human increase, they have never yet appeared. Whatever 
may sometime be, this never yet has been the evil that has 
afflicted mankind. Population always tending to overpass 
the limit of subsistence! How is it, then, that this globe of 
ours, after all the thousands, and itis now thought millions, 
of years that man has been upon the earth, is yet so thinly 
populated? How is it, then, that so many of the hives of 
human life are now deserted—that once cultivated fields 
are rank with jungle, and the wild beast licks her cubs 
where once were busy haunts of men ? 

It is a fact, that, as we count our increasing millions, we 
are apt to lose sight of—nevertheless it is a fact—that in 
what we know of the world’s history decadence of popula- 
tion is aS common as increase. Whether the ageregate 
population of the earth is now greater than at any previous 
epoch is a speculation which can only deal with guesses. 
Since Montesquieu, in the early part of the last century, as- 
serted (what was then probably the prevailing impression) 
that the population of the earth had, since the Christian 
era, greatly declined, opinion has run the other way. But 
the tendency of recent investigation and exploration has 
been to give greater credit to what have been deemed the 
exaggerated accounts of ancient historians and travelers, 
and to reveal indications of denser populations and more 
advanced civilizations than had before been suspected, as 
well as of a higher antiquity in the human race. And in 


_ 


* I say considerable country, because there may be small islands, such as Pitcairn’s 
Island, cut off from communication with the rest of the world and consequently from 
the exchanges which are necessary to the improved modes of production resorted to as 
population becomes dense, which may seem to offer examples in point, A moment’s 
reflection, however, will show that these exceptional cases are not in point. 


96 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book L1. 


basing our estimates of population upon the development 
of trade, the advance of the arts, and the size of cities, we 
are apt to underrate the density of population which the 
intensive cultivations, characteristic of the earlier civil- 
izations, are capable of maintaining—especially where 
irrigation is resorted to. As we may see from the closely 
cultivated districts of China and Hurope a very great 
population of simple habits can readily exist with very little 
commerce and a much lower stage of those arts in which 
modern progress has been most marked, and without that 
tendency to concentrate in cities which modern popula- 
tions show.* 

Be this as it may, the only continent which we can be 
sure now contains a larger population than ever before is 
Europe. But this is not true of all parts of Europe. Cer- 
tainly Greece, the Mediterranean Islands, and Turkey in 
Europe, probably Italy, and possibly Spain, have contained 
larger populations than now, and this may be likewise true 
of Northwestern and parts of Central and Eastern Europe. 

America also has increased in population during the time 
we know of it; but this increase is not so great as is popu- 
larly supposed, some estimates giving to Peru alone at the 
time of the discovery a greater population than now exists 
on the whole continent of South America. And all the in- 
dications are that previous to the discovery the population 
of America had been declining. What great nations have 
run their course, what empires have arisen and fallen in 
‘‘that new world which is the old,” we can only imagine. 
But fragments of massive ruins yet attest a grander pre- 
Incan civilization ; amid the tropical forests of Yucatan 
and Central America are the remains of great cities forgot- 
ten ere the Spanish conquest ; Mexico, as Cortez found it, 


* As may be seen from the map in H. H. Bancroft’s ‘‘ Native Races,” the State 
of Vera Cruz is not one of those parts of Mexico noticeable for its antiquities. Yet 
Hugo Fink, of Cordova, writing to the Smithsonian Institute (Reports 1870), says there 
is hardly a foot in the whole State in which by excavation either a broken obsedian 
knife or a broken piece of pottery is not found; that the whole country is intersected 
with parallel lines of stones intended to keep the earth from washing away in the rainy 
season, which show that even the very poorest land was put into requisition, and 
that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the ancient population was at least ag 
dense as it is at present in the most populous districts of Europe. 


Chap. Il. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 97 


showed the superimposition of barbarism upon a higher 
social development, while through a great part of what is 
now the United States are scattered mounds which prove 
a once relatively dense population, and here and there, as 
in the Lake Superior copper mines, are traces of higher arts 
than were known to the Indians with whom the whites 
came in contact. 

As to Africa there can be no question. Northern Africa 
can contain but a fraction of the population that it had in 
ancient times; the Nile Valley once held an enormously 
greater population than now, while south of the Sahara 
there is nothing to show increase within historic times, and 
wide-spread depopulation was certainly caused by the slave 
trade. 

As for Asia, which even now contains more than half the 
human race, though it is not much more than half as densely 
populated as Europe, there are indications that both 
India and China once contained larger populations than 
now, while that great breeding ground of men from which 
issued swarms that overran both countries and sent great 
waves of people rolling upon Europe, must have been’ 
once far more populous. But the most marked change is 
in Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Persia, and in short that 
vast district which yielded to the conquering arms of Alex- 
ander. Where were once great cities and teeming popula- 
tions are now squalid villages and barren wastes. 

It is somewhat strange that among all the theories that 
have been raised, that of a fixed quantity to human life on 
this earth has not been broached. It would at least better 
accord with historical facts than that of the constant ten- 
dency of population to outrun subsistence. It is clear 
that population has here ebbed and there flowed; its cen- 
ters have changed; new nations have arisen and old nations 
declined; sparsely settled districts have become populous 
and populous districts have lost their population; but as 
far back as we can go without abandoning ourselves 
wholly to inference, there is nothing to show continuous 
increase, or even to clearly show an aggregate increase 


98 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11. 


from time to time. The advance of the pioneers of peoples 
has, so far as we can discern, never been into uninhabited 
lands—their march has always been a battle with some 
other people previously in possession; behind dim empires 
vaguer ghosts of empire loom. That the population of 
the world must have had its small beginnings we confi- 
dently infer, for we know that there was a geologic era 
when human life could not have existed, and we cannot 
believe that men sprang up all at once, as from the dragon 
teeth sowed by Cadmus; yet through long vistas, where 
history, tradition and antiquities shed a light that is lost in 
faint glimmers, we may discern large populations. And 
during these long periods the principle of population has 
not been strong enough to fully settle the world, or even 
so far as we can clearly see to materially increase its agere- 
gate population. Compared with its capacities to support 
human life the earth as a whole is yet most sparsely 
populated. 

There is another broad, general fact which cannot fail to 
strike any one who, thinking of this subject, extends his 
view beyond modern society. Malthusianism predicates a 
universal law—that the natural tendency of population is 
to outrun subsistence. If there be such a law, it must, 
wherever population has attained a certain density, become 
as obvious as any of the great natural laws which have 
been everywhere recognized. How is it, then, that neither 
in classical creeds and codes, nor in those of the Jews, the 
Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Chinese, nor any of the 
peoples who have lived in close association and have built 
up creeds and codes, do we find any injunctions to the 
practice of the prudential restraints of Malthus ; but that 
on the contrary, the wisdom of the centuries, the religions 
of the world, have always inculcated ideas of civic and re- 
ligious duty the very reverse of those which the current 
political economy enjoins, and which Annie Besant is now 
trying to popularize in England? 

And it must be remembered that there have been socie- 
ties in which the community guaranteed to every member 


Chap. I. INFERENCES FROM FACTS 99 


employment and subsistence. John Stuart Mill says 
(Book IT, Chap. XII, Sec. 2,) that to do this without state 
regulation of marriages and births, would be to produce a 
state of general misery and degradation. ‘‘ These conse- 
quences,” he says, ‘‘have been so often and so clearly 
pointed out by authors of reputation, that ignorance of 
them on the part of educated persons is no longer pardon- 
able.” Yetin Sparta, in Peru, in Paraguay, as in the indus- 
trial communities which appear almost every where to have 
constituted the primitive agricultural organization, there 
seems to have been an utter ignorance of these dire conse- 
quences of a natural tendency. 

Besides the broad, general facts I have cited, there are 
facts of common knowledge which seem utterly inconsist- 
ent with such an overpowering tendency to multiplication. 
If the tendency to reproduce be so strong as Malthusian- 
ism supposes, how is it that families so often become 
extinct—families in which want is unknown? How is it, 
then, that when every premium is offered by hereditary 
titles and hereditary possessions, not alone to the principle of 
increase, but to the preservation of genealogical knowledge 
and the proving up of descent, that in such an aristocracy 
as that of England, so many peerages should lapse, and the 
House of Lords only be kept up from century to century 
‘by fresh creations ? 

Hor the solitary example of a family that has survived 
any great lapse of time, even though assured of subsistence 
and honor, we must go to unchangeable China. The de- 
scendants of Confucius still exist there, and enjoy peculiar 
privileges and consideration, forming, in fact, the only 
hereditary aristocracy. On the presumption that popula- 
tion tends to double every twenty-five years, they should, in 
2159 years after the death of Confucius, have amounted to 
859,559,193,106,709,670,198,710,528 souls. Instead of any 
such unimaginable number, the descendants of Confucius, 
2150 years after his death, in the reign of Kanghi, numbered 
11,000 males, or say 22,000 souls. This is quite a discrep- 
ancy, and is the more striking when it is remembered that 


100 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 


the esteem in which this family is held on account of their 
ancestor, ‘‘the Most Holy Ancient Teacher,” has pre- 
vented the operation of the positive check, while the max- 
ims of Confucius inculcate anything but the prudential 
check. 

Yet, it may be said, that even this increase is a great one. 
Twenty-two thousand persons descended from a single pair 
in 2150 years is far short of the Malthusian rate. Never- 
theless, it is suggestive of possible overcrowding. 

But consider. Increase of descendants does not show 
increase of population. It could only do this when the 
breeding was in and in. Smith and his wife have a son and 
daughter, who marry respectively some one else’s daughter 
and son, and each have two children. Smith and his wife 
would thus have four grandchildren ; but there would be 
in the one generation no greater number than in the 
other—each child would have four grandparents. And 
supposing this process were to go on, the line of 
descent might constantly spread out into hundreds, thou- 
sands and millions; but in each generation of descendants 
there would be no more individuals than in any previous 
generation of ancestors. The web of generations is like 
lattice-work or the diagonal threads in cloth. Commencing 
at any point at the top, the eye follows lines which at 
the bottom widely diverge; but beginning at any point 
at the bottom, the lines diverge in the same way to 
the top. How many children a man may have is problem- 
atical, But that he had two parents is certain, and that 
these again had two parents each is also certain. Follow 
this geometrical progression through a few generations, 
and see if it does not lead to quite as ‘‘ striking con- 
sequences” as Mr. Malthus’ peopling of the solar systems. 

But from such considerations as these let us advance to 
amore definite inquiry. I assert that the cases commonly 
cited as instances of over-population will not bear investi- 
gation. India, China, and Ireland furnish the strongest of 
these cases. In each of these countries, large numbers 
have perished by starvation and large classes are reduced 


Chap. I INFERENCES FROM FACTS 101 


to abject misery or compelled to emigrate. But is this 
really due to over-population ? 

Comparing total population with total area, India and 
China are far from being the most densely populated coun- 
tries of the world. According to the estimates of MM. 
Behm and Wagner, the population of India is but 132 to the 
square mile and that of China 119, whereas Saxony has a 
population of 442 to the square mile; Belgium 441; Eng- 
land 422; the Netherlands 291; Italy 234 and Japan 233.* 
There are thus in both countries large areas unused or not 
fully used, but.even in their more densely populated dis- 
tricts there can be no doubt that either could maintain a 
much greater population in a much higher degree of com- 
fort, for in both countries is labor applied to production in 
the rudest and most inefficient ways, and in both countries 
great natural resources are wholly neglected. This arises 
from no innate deficiency in the people, for the Hindoo, as 
comparative philology has shown, is of our own blood, and 
China possessed a high degree of civilization and the rudi- 
ments of the most important modern inventions when our 
ancestors were wandering savages. It arises from the form 
which the social organization has in both countries taken, 
which has shackled productive power and robbed industry 
of its reward. 

In India from time immemorial, the working classes have 
been ground down by exactions and oppressions into a 
condition of helpless and hopeless degradation. For ages 
and ages the cultivator of the soil has esteemed himself 
happy if, of his produce, the extortion of the strong hand 
left him enough to support life and furnish seed; capital 
could nowhere be safely accumulated or to any consider- 
able extent be used to assist production ; all wealth that 
could be wrung from the people was in the possession of 


* [ take these figures from the Smithsonian Report for 1873, leaving out decimals. 
MM. Behm and Wagner put the population of China at 446,500,000, though there are 
some who contend that it does not exceed 150,000,000, They put the population of 
Hither India at 206,225,580, giving 132.29 to the square mile; of Ceylon at 2,405,287 
or 97.36 to the square mile; of Further India at 21,018,062, or 27.94 to the square mile. 
They estimate the population of the world at 1,377,000,000, an average of 26.64 to the 
wquare mile. 


102 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book 11. 


princes who were little better than robber chiefs quartered 
on the country, or in that of their farmers or favorites, and 
was wasted in useless or worse than useless luxury, while 
religion, sunken into an elaborate and terrible superstition, 
tyrannized over the mind as physical force did over the 
bodies of men. Under these conditions, the only arts that 
could advance were those that ministered to the ostentation 
and luxury of the great. The elephants of the rajah 
blazed with gold of exquisite workmanship, and the um- 
brellas that symbolized his regal power glittered with 
gems; but the plow of the ryot was only a sharpened stick. 
The ladies of the rajah’s harem wrapped themselves in mus-~ 
lins so fine as to take the name of woven wind, but the tools 
of the artisan were of the poorest and rudest description, 
and commerce could only be carried on as it were by 
stealth. 

Is it not clear that this tyranny and insecurity have pro- 
duced the want and starvation of India; and not, as ac- 
cording to Buckle, the pressure of population upon sub- 
sistence that has produced the want, and the want the tyr- 
anny.* Says the Rev. William Tennant, a chaplain in the 
service of the East India Company, writing in 1796, two 
years before the publication of the ‘‘ Essay on Population:’’ 


‘¢When we reflect upon the great fertility of Hindostan, it is amazing 
to consider the frequency of famine. It is evidently not owing to any 
sterility of soil or climate; the evil must be traced to some political 
cause, and it requires but little penetration to discover it in the ava- 
rice and extortion of the various governments. The great spur to in- 
dustry, that of security, is taken away. Hence no man raises more 
grain than is barely sufficient for himself, and the first unfavorable 
season produces a famine. 

‘“The Mogul government at no period offered full security to the 
prince, still less to his vassals ; and to peasants the most scanty pro- 
tection of all. It was a continued tissue of violence and insurrection, 
treachery and punishment, under which neither commerce nor the 
arts could prosper, nor agriculture assume the appearance of a sys- 
tem. Its downfall gave rise to a state still more afflictive, since 
anarchy is worse than misrule. The Mohammedan government, 
wretched as it was, the European nations have not the merit of over- 


* History of Civilization. Vol. I, Chap. 2. In this chapter Buckle has collected a 
great deal of evidence of the oppression and degradation of the tae ep of India from 
the most remote times, a condition which, blinded by the Malthusian doctrine, he 
has accepted and made the cornerstone of his theory of the development of civiliza- 
tion, he attributes to the ease with which food can there be produced, 


- 


Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 105 


turning. It fell beneath the weight of its own corruption, and had 
already been succeeded by the multifarious tyranny of petty chiefs, 
whose right to govern consisted in their treason to the state, and 
whose exactions on the peasants were as boundless as their avarice. 
The rents to government were, and, where natives rule, still are, 
levied twice a year by a merciless banditti, under the semblance of an 
army, who wantonly destroy or carry off whatever part of the produce 
may satisfy their caprice or satiate their avidity, after having hunted 
the ill-fated peasants from the villages to the woods. Any attempt 
of the peasants to defend their persons or property within the mud 
walls of their villages only calls for the more signal vengeance on 
those useful, but ill-fated mortals. They are then surrounded and 
attacked with musketry and field pieces till resistance ceases, when 
the survivors are sold, and their habitations burnt and leveled with 
the ground. Hence you will frequently meet with the ryots gather- 
ing up the scattered remnants of what had yesterday been their habi- 
tation, if fear has permitted them to return; but oftener the ruins are 
seen smoking, after a second yisitation of this kind, without the ap- 
pearance of a human being to interrupt the awful silence of desola- 
tion. This description does not apply to the Mohammedan chieftains 
alone; it is equally applicable to the Rajahs in the districts governed 
by Hindoos.’’* 


To this merciless rapacity, which would have produced 
want and famine were the population but one to a square 
mile and the land a Garden of Eden, succeeded, in the first 
era of British rule in India, as merciless a rapacity, backed 
by a far more irresistible power. Says Macaulay, in his 
essay on Lord Clive: 


‘Enormous fortunes were rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while 
millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretched- 
ness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never 
under tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the Company 
thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah. * * * Itresembled 
the government of evil genii, rather than the government of human 
tyrants. Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. Sometimes 
they fled from the white man as their fathers had been used to fly 
from the Maharatta, and the palanquin of the English traveler was 
often carried through silent villages and towrfs that the report of his 
approach had made desolate.”’ 


Upon horrors that Macaulay thus but touches, the vivid 
eloquence of Burke throws a stronger light—whole districts 
surrendered to the unrestrained cupidity of the worst of 
human kind, poverty-stricken peasants fiendishly tortured 
to compel them to give up their little hoards, and once 
populous tracts turned into deserts. 

But the lawless license, of early English rule has been 


—_— 


— 


* Indian Recreations. By Rey. Wm. Tennant. London, 1804, Vol. I, Sec. XXXI1X. 


104 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. nak ir 


long restrained. To all that vast population the strong 
hand of England has given a more than Roman peace ; the 
just principles of English law have been extended by an 
elaborate system of codes and law officers designed to se- 
cure to the humblest of these abject peoples the rights of 
Anglo-Saxon freemen; the whole peninsula has been in- 
tersected by railways, and great irrigation works have been 
constructed. Yet, with increasing frequency, famine has 
succeeded famine, raging with greater intensity over wider 
areas. 

Is not this a demonstration of the Malthusian theory? 
Does it not show that no matter how much the possibilities 
of subsistence are increased, population still continues to 
press upon it? Does it not show, as Malthus contended, 
that, to shut up the sluices by which superabundant popu- 
lation is carried off, is but to compel nature to open new 
ones, and that unless the sources of human increase are 
checked by prudential regulation, the alternative of war is 
famine? This has been the orthodox explanation. But 
the truth, as may be seen in the facts brought forth in 
recent discussions of Indian affairs in the English periodi- 
cals, is that these famines, which have been, and are now, 
sweeping away their millions, are no more due to the pres- 
sure of population upon the natural limits of subsistence 
than was the desolation of the Carnatic when Hyder Ali’s 
horsemen burst upon it in a whirlwind of destruction. 

The millions of India have bowed their necks beneath 
the yokes of many conquerors, but worst of all is the steady, 
grinding weight of English domination—a weight which is 
literally crushing millions out of existence, and, as shown 
by English writers, is inevitably tending to a most frightful 
and widespread catastrophe. Other conquerors have lived 
in the land, and, though bad and tyrannous in their rule, 
have understood and been understood by the people; but 
India now is like a great estate owned by an absentee and 
alien landlord. A most expensive military and civil estab- 
lishment is kept up, managed and officered by Englishmen 
who regard India as but a place of temporary exile; and 


Chap. IT. INFERENCES FROM FACTS 105 


an enormous sum, estimated as at least £20,000,000 an- 
nually (raised from a population where laborers are in many 
places glad in good times to work for 13d. to 4d. a day), is 
drained away tu England in the shape of remittances, pen- 
sions, home charges of the government, ete.—a tribute for 
which there is no return. The immense sums lavished on 
railroads have, as shown by the returns, been economically 
unproductive ; the great irrigation works are for the most 
part costly failures. In large parts of India the English, in 
their desire to create a class of landed proprietors, turned 
over the soil in absolute possession to hereditary tax- 
gatherers, who rack-rent the cultivators most mercilessly. 
In other parts, where the rent is still taken by the State in 
the shape of a land tax, assessments are so high, and 
taxes are collected so relentlessly, as to drive the ryots, who 
get but the most scanty living in good seasons, into the 
claws of money lenders, who are, if possible, even more 
rapacious than the zemindars. Upon salt,-an article of 
prime necessity everywhere, and of especial necessity where 
food is almost exclusively vegetable, a tax of nearly 
twelve hundred per cent. is imposed, so that its various 
industrial uses are prohibited, and large bodies of the people 
cannot get enough to keep either themselves or their 
cattle in health. Below the English officials are a horde of 
native employees who oppress and extort. The effect of 
English law, with its rigid rules, and, to the native, mys- 
terious proceedings, has been but to put a potent instru- 
ment of plunder into the hands of the native money lend- 
ers, from whom the peasants are compelled to borrow on 
the most extravagant terms to meet their taxes, and to 
whom they are easily induced to give obligations of which 
they know not the meaning. ‘‘ We do not care for the 
people of India,” writes Florence Nightingale, with what 
seems like a sob. ‘‘The saddest sight to be seen in the 
East—nay, probably in the world—is the peasant of our 
Eastern Empire.” And she goes on to show the causes of 
the terribie famines, in taxation which takes from the 
cultivators the very means of cultivation, and the actual 


106 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book Tt. 


slavery to which the ryots are reduced as ‘‘ the conse- 
quences of our own laws;’’ producing in ‘‘ the most fertile 
country in the world, a grinding, chronic semi-starvation 
in many places where what is called famine does not exist.’”* 
‘‘The famines which have been devastating India,” says H. 
M. Hyndman,f ‘‘are in the main financial famines. Men 
and women cannot get food, because they cannot save the 
money to buy it Yet we are driven, so we say, to tax these 
people more.” And he shows how, even from famine 
stricken districts, food is exported in payment of taxes, and - 
how the whole of India is subjected to a steady and ex- 
hausting drain, which, combined with the enormous ex- 
penses of government, is making the population year by 
year poorer. The exports of India consist almost exclu- 
sively of agricultural products. For at least one-third of 
these, as Mr. Hyndman shows, no return whatever is re- 
ceived; they represent tribute—remittances made by Eng- 
lishmen in India, or expenses of the English branch of the 
Indian government}. And for the rest, the return is for 
the most part government stores, or articles of comfort and 
luxury used by the English masters of India. He shows 
that the expenses of government have been enormously in- 
creased under Imperial rule; that the relentless taxation of 
a population so miserably poor that the masses are not more 
than half fed, is robbing them of their scanty means for cul- 
tivating the soil; that the number of bullocks (the Indian 
draft animal) is decreasing, and the scanty implements of 
culture being given up to money lenders, from whom “‘ we, 
a business people, are forcing the cultivators to borrow at 


* Miss Nightingale (The People of India, in ‘‘ Nineteenth Century” for August, 1878) 
gives instances, which she says represent millions of cases, of the state of peonage to 
which the cultivators of Southern India have been reduced through the facilities afforded 
by the Civil Courts to the frauds and oppressions of money lenders and minor native 
officials. ‘‘ Our Civil Courts are regarded as institutions for enabling the rich to grind 
the faces of the poor, and many are fain to seek a refuge from their jurisdiction within 
native territory,” says Sir David Wedderburn, in an article on Protected Princes in 
India, in a previous (July) number of the same magazine. in which he also gives a na- 
tive State, where taxation is comparatively light, as an instance of the most prosper- 
ous population of India. 

+ See articles in ‘‘ Nineteenth Century” for October, 1878, and March, 1879. 

¢ Prof. Fawcett in a recent articie on the Proposed Loans to India, calls attention to 
such items as £1,200 for outfit and passage of a member of the Governor General’s 
Council ; £2,450 for outfit and passage of Bishops of Calcutta and Bombay, 


. Chap. 11. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 107 


12, 24, 60 per cent.* to build and pay the interest on the 
cost of vast public works, which have never paid nearly five 
per cent.”” Says Mr. Hyndman: “‘ The truth is that Indian 
society as a whole has been frightfully impoverished under 
our rule, and that the process is now going on at an ex- 
ceedingly rapid rate’—a statement which cannot be 
doubted, in view of the facts presented not only by such 
writers as I have referred to, but by Indian officials them- 
selves. The very efforts made by the government to alle- 
viate famines do, by the increased taxation imposed, but 
intensify and extend their real cause. Although in the re- 
cent famine in Southern India six millions of people, it is 
estimated, perished of actual starvation, and the great mass 
of those who survived were actually stripped, yet the taxes 
were not remitted and the salt tax, already prohibitory to 
the great bulk of these poverty stricken people, was in- 
creased forty per cent, just as after the terrible Bengal 
famine in 1770 the revenue was actually driven up, by rais- 
ing assessments upon the survivors and rigorously enforcing 
collection. 

In India now, as in India in past times, it is only the 
most superficial view that can attribute want and starvation 
to pressure of population upon the ability of the land to 
produce subsistence. Could the cultivators retain their little 
capital—could they be released from the drain which, even 
in non-famine years, reduces great masses of them to a scale 
of living not merely below what is deemed necessary for 
the sepoys, but what English humanity gives to the pris- 
oners in the jails—reviving industry, assuming more pro- 
ductive forms, would undoubtedly suffice to keep a much 
greater population. There are still in India great areas 
uncultivated, vast mineral resources untouched, and it is 
certain that the population of India does not reach, as 
within historical times it never has reached, the real limit 
of the soil to furnish subsistence, or even the point where 


* Florence Nightingale says 100 per cent. is common, and even then the cultivator is 
robbed in ways which she illustrates. It is hardly necessary to say that these rates, 
like those of the pawnbroker, are not interest in the economic sense of the term, 


108 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 


this power begins to decline with the increasing drafts 
made upon it. The real cause of want in India has been, 
and yet is, the rapacity of man, not the niggardliness of 
nature. 

What is true of India is true of China. Densely popu- 
lated as China is in many parts, that the extreme poverty 
of the lower classes is to be attributed to causes similar to 
those which have operated in India, and not to too great 
population, is shown by many facts. Insecurity prevails, 
production goes on under the greatest disadvantages, and 
exchange is closely fettered. Where the government is a 
succession of squeezings, and security for capital of any 
sort must be purchased of a mandarin; where men’s 
shoulders are the great reliance for inland transportation; 
where the junk is obliged to be constructed so as to unfit 
it for a sea-boat; where piracy is a regular trade, and 
robbers often march in regiments, poverty would prevail 
and the failure of a crop result in famine, no matter how 
sparse the population.* That China is capable of support- 
ing a much greater population is shown not only by the 
creat extent of uncultivated land to which all travelers tes- 
tify, but by the immense unworked mineral deposits which 
are there known to exist. China, for instance, is said to 
contain the largest and finest deposit of coal yet anywhere 
discovered. How much the working of these coal beds 
would add to the ability to support a greater population, 
may readily be imagined. Coal is not food, itis true; butits 
production is equivalent to the production of food. For, 
not only may coal be exchanged for food, as is done in all 
mining districts, but the force evolved by its consumption 
may be used in the production of food, or may set labor free 
for the production of food. 

Neither in India nor China, therefore, can poverty and 
starvation be charged to the pressure of population against 
subsistence. It is not dense population, but the causes 
which prevent social organization from taking its natural 


* The seat of recent famine in China was not the most thickly settled districts. 


Chap. II. INFERENCES FROM FACTS 109 


development and labor from securing its full return, that 
keep millions just on the verge of starvation, and every now 
and again force millions beyond it. That the Hindoo la- 
borer thinks himself fortunate to get a handful of rice, that 
the Chinese eat rats and puppies, is no more due to the 
pressure of population than it is due to the pressure of 
population that the Digger Indians live on grasshoppers, or 
the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia eat the worms found 
in rotten wood. . 

Let me be understood. I do not mean merely to say that 
India or China could, with a more highly developed civil- 
ization, maintain a greater population, for to this any Mal- 
thusian would agree. The Malthusian doctrine does not 
deny that an advance in the productive arts would permit a 
greater population to find subsistence. But the Malthusian 
theory affirms—and this is its essence—that, whatever be the 
capacity for production, the natural tendency of population 
is to come up with it, and, in the endeavor to press beyond 
it, to produce, to use the phrase of Malthus, that degree of 
vice and misery which is necessary to prevent further in- 
crease; so that as productive power is increased, population 
will correspondingly increase, and in a little time produce 
the same results as before. What Isay is this: that nowhere 
is there any instance which will support this theory; that 
nowhere can want be properly attributed to the pressure of 
population against the power to procure subsistence in the 
then existing degree of human knowledge; that everywhere 
the vice and misery attributed to over-population can be 
traced to the warfare, tyranny, and oppression which pre- 
vent knowledge from being utilized and deny the security 
essential to production. The reason why the natural in- 
crease of population does not produce want, we shall come 
to hereafter. The fact that it has not yet anywhere done 
so, is what we are now concerned with. This fact is ob- 
vious with regard to India and China. It will be obvious, 
too, wherever we trace to their causes the results which on 
superficial view are often taken to proceed from over- 
population. 


110 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Book II. 


Ireland, of all European countries, furnishes the great 
stock example of over-population. The extreme poverty 
of the peasantry and the low rate of wages there prevail- 
ing, the Irish famine, and Irish emigration, are constantly 
referred to as a demonstration of the Malthusian theory 
worked out under the eyes of the civilized world. I doubt 
if a more striking instance can be cited of the power of a 
pre-accepted theory to blind men as to the true relations of 
facts. The truth1s, and it lies on the surface, that Ireland 
has never yet had a population which the natural powers 
of the country, in the existing state of the productive arts, 
could not have maintained in ample comfort. At the 
period of her greatest population (1840-45) Ireland con- 
tained something over eight millions of people. But a 
very large proportion of them managed merely to exist— 
lodging in miserable cabins, clothed with miserable rags, 
and with but potatoes for their staple food. When the 
potato blight came, they died by thousands. But was it 
the inability of the soil to support so large a population 
that compelled so many to live in this miserable way, and 
exposed them ta starvation on the failure of a single root 
crop? On the contrary, it was the same remorseless rapac- 
ity that robbed the Indian ryot of the fruits of his toil 
and left him to starve where nature offered plenty. A mer- 
ciless banditti of tax-gatherers did not march through the 
land plundering and torturing, but the laborer was just as 
effectually stripped by as merciless a horde of landlords, 
among whom the soil had been divided as their absolute 
possession, regardless of any rights of those who lived 
upon it. 

Consider the conditions of production under which this 
eight millions managed to live until the potato blight came. 
It was a condition to which the words used by Mr. Tennant 
in reference to India may as appropriately be applied— 
‘the great spur to industry, that of security, was taken 
away.” Cultivation was for the most part carried on by 
tenants at will, who, even if the rack-rents which they were 
forced to pay had permitted them, did not dare to make 


Chap. II INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 111 


improvements which would have been but the signal for an 
increase of rent. Labor was thus applied in the most in- 
efficient and wasteful manner, and labor was dissipated in 
aimless idleness that, with any security for its fruits, would 
have been applied unremittingly. But even under these 
conditions, it is a matter of fact that Ireland did more than 
support eight millions. For when her population was at 
its highest, Ireland was a food-exporting country. Even 
during the famine, grain and meat and butter and cheese 
were carted for exportation along roads lined with the starv- 
ing and past trenches into which the dead were piled. For 
these exports of food, or at least for a great part of them, 
there was no return. So far as the people of Ireland 
were concerned, the food thus exported might as well 
have been burned up or thrown into thesea, or never 
produced. It went not as an exchange, but as a tribute— 
to pay the rent of absentee landlords; a levy wrung from 
producers by those who in no wise contributed to pro- 
duction. 

Had this food been left to those who raised it; had 
the cultivators of the soil been permitted to retain 
and use the capital their labor produced; had security 
stimulated industry and permitted the adoption of econo- 
mical methods, there would have been enough to sup- 
port in bounteous comfort the largest population Ireland 
ever had, and the potato blight might have come and 
gone without stinting a single human being of a full 
meal. For it was not the imprudence ‘‘ of Irish peasants,”’ 
as English economists coldly say, which induced them 
to make the potato the staple of their food. Irish 
emigrants, when they can get other things, do not live 
upon the potato, and certainly in the United States the 
prudence of the Irish character, in endeavoring to lay by 
something for a rainy day, is remarkable. They lived on 
the potato, because rack-rents stripped everything else 
from them. The truth is, that the poverty and misery of 
Ireland have never been fairly attributable to over-pop- 
ulation. 


Pig POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book II. 


McCulloch, writing in 1838, says, in Note IV to ‘‘Wealth 
of Nations:” 

‘‘The wonderful density of population in Ireland is the immediate 
cause of the abject poverty and depressed condition of the great bulk 
of the people. It is not too much to say that there are at present 
more than double the persons in Ireland it is, with its existing means 
of production, able either fully to employ or to maintain in a moderate 
state of comfort.”’ ‘ 


As in 1841 the population of Ireland was given as 8,175,- 
124, we may set it down in 1838 as about eight millions. 
Thus, to change McCulloch’s negative into an affirmative, 
Ireland would, according to the over-population theory, 
have been able to fully employ and maintain in a moderate 
state of comfort something less than four million persons. 
Now, in the early part of the preceding century, when Dean 
Swift wrote his ‘‘ Modest Proposal,” the population of Ire- 
land was abouttwo millions. As neither the means nor the 
arts of production had perceptibly advanced in Ireland 
during the interval, then—if the abject poverty and de- 
pressed condition of the Irish people in 1838 were attrib- 
utable to over-population—there should, upon McCul- 
loch’s own admission, have been in Ireland in 1727 more 
than full employment, and much more than a moderate 
state of comfort, for the whole two millions. Yet, instead 
of this being the case, the abject poverty and depressed 
condition of the Irish people in 1727 were such, that, with 
burning, blistering irony, Dean Swift proposed to relieve 
surplus population by cultivating a taste for roasted babies, 
and bringing yearly to the shambles, as dainty food for the 
rich, 100,000 Irish infants! 

It is difficult for one who has been looking over the liter- 
ature of Irish misery, as while writing this chapter I have 
been doing, to speak in decorous terms of the complacent 
attribution of Irish want and suffering to over-population 
which are to be found even in the works of such high- 
minded men as Mill and Buckle. I know of nothing better 
calculated to make the blood boil than the cold accounts of 
the grasping, grinding tyranny to which the Irish people 
have been subjected, and to which, and not to any inability 


Chap.- LI. INFERENCES FROM FACTS. 113 


of the land to support its population, Irish pauperism and 
Irish famine are to be attributed; and were it not for the 
enervating effect which the history of the world proves to 
be everywhere the result of abject poverty, it would be diffi- 
cult to resist something like a feeling of contempt for a race 
who, stung by such wrongs, have only occasionally mur- 
dered a landlord! 

Whether over-population ever did cause pauperism and 
starvation, may be an open question; but the pauperism and 
starvation of Ireland can no more be attributed to this 
cause than can the slave trade be attributed to the over- 
population of Africa, or the destruction of Jerusalem to 
the inability of subsistence to keep pace with reproduction. 
Had Ireland been by nature a grove of bananas and bread- 
fruit, had her coasts been lined by the guano-deposits of the 
Chinchas, and the sun of lower latitudes warmed into more 
abundant life her moist soil, the social conditions that have 
prevailed there would still have brought forth poverty and 
starvation. How could there fail to be pauperism and 
famine in a country where rack-rents wrested from the cul- 
tivator of the soil all the produce of his labor except just 
enough to maintain life in good seasons, where tenure at 
will forbade improvements and removed incentive to any but 
the most wasteful and poverty-stricken culture ; where the 
tenant dared not accumulate capital, even if he could get 
it, for fear the landlord would demand it in the rent; where 
in fact he was an abject slave, who, at the nod of a human 
being like himself, might at any time be driven from his 
miserable mud cabin, a houseless, homeless, starving wan- 
derer, forbidden even to pluck the spontaneous fruits of 
the earth, or to trap a wild hare to satisfy his hunger? No 
matter how sparse the population, no matter what the nat- 
ural resources, are not pauperism and starvation necessary 
consequences in a land where the producers of wealth are 
compelled to work under conditions which deprive them of 
hope, of self-respect, of energy, of thrift ; where absentee 
landlords drain away without return at least a fourth of the 


net produce of the soil, and when, besides them, a starving 
6 


114 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Boor Tf 


industry must support resident landlords, with their horses 
and hounds, agents, jobbers, middlemen and bailiffs, an 
alien state church to insult religious prejudices, and an 
army of policemen and soldiers to overawe and hunt down 
any opposition to the iniquitous system? Is it not impiety 
far worse than atheism to charge upon natural laws misery 
so caused? 

What is true in these three cases will be found upon exe 
amination true of all cases. So far as our knowledge of 
facts goes, we may safely deny that the increase of popula- 
“tion has ever yet pressed upon subsistence in such a way as 
to produce vice and misery ; that increase of numbers has 
ever yet decreased the relative production of food. The 
famines of India, China, and Ireland can no more be cred- 
ited to over-population than the famines of sparsely popu- 
lated Brazil. The vice and misery that come of want can 
no more be attributed to the niggardliness of Nature than 
can the six millions slain by the sword of Genghis Khan, 
Tamerlane’s pyramid of skulls, or the extermination of the 
ancient Britons or of the aboriginal inhabitants of the West 
Indies, 


CHAPTER III 
INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 


If we turn from an examination of the facts brought for- 
ward in illustration of the Malthusian theory to consider 
the analogies by which it is supported, we shall find the 
same inconclusiveness. 

The strength of the reproductive force in the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms—such facts as that a single pair of sal- 
mon might, if preserved from their natural enemies for afew 
years, fill the ocean ; that a pair of rabbits would, under the 
same circumstances, soon overrun a continent ; that many 
plants scatter their seeds by the hundred fold, and some 
insects deposit thousands of eggs; and that everywhere 
through these kingdoms each species constantly tends to 
press, and when not limited by the number of its enemies, 
evidently does press, against the lhmits of subsistence—is 
constantly cited, from Malthus down to the text books of the 
present day, as showing that population likewise tends to 
press against subsistence, and, when unrestrained by other 
means, its natural increase must necessarily result in such 
low wages and want, or (if that will not suffice, and the 
increase still goes on), in such actual starvation, as will 
keep it within the limits of subsistence. 

But is this analogy valid? It is from the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms that man’s food is drawn, and hence the 
greater strength of the reproductive force in the vegetable 
and animal kinedoms than in man simply proves the power 
of subsistence to increase faster than population. Does 
not the fact that all of the things which furnish man’s sub- 
sistence have the power to multiply many fold—some of 
them many thousand fold, and some of them many million 
or even billion fold—while he is only doubling his numbers, 


_—_—_- 


116 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book. fT 


show that, let human beings increase to the full extent of their 
reproductive power, the increase of population can never 
exceed subsistence? This is clear when it is remembered that 
though in the vegetable and animal kingdoms each species, 
by virtue of its reproductive power, naturally and neces- 
sarily presses against the conditions which limit its further 
increase, yet these conditions are nowhere fixed and final. 
No species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, water, air, and 
sunshine ; but the actual limit of each is in the existence of 
other species, its rivals, its enemies, or its food. Thus the 
conditions which limit the existence of such of these species 
as afford him subsistence man can extend (in some cases 
his mere appearance will extend them), and thus the repro- 
ductive forces of the species which supply his wants, instead 
of wasting themselves against their former limit, start for- 
ward in his service at a pace which his powers of increase 
cannot rival, If he but shoot hawks, food-birds will 
increase; if he but trap foxes the wild rabbits will mul- 
tiply ; the honey bee moves with the pioneer, and on the 
organic matter with which man’s presence fills the rivers, 
fishes feed. 

Even if any consideration of final causes be excluded ; 
even if it be not permitted to suggest that the high and 
constant reproductive force in vegetables and animals has 
been ordered to enable them to subserve the uses of man, 
and that therefore the pressure of the lower forms of life 
against subsistence does not tend to show that it must like- 
wise be so with man, ‘‘the roof and crown of things;” yet 
there still remains a distinction between man and all other 
forms of life that destroys the analogy Of all living 
things, man is the only one who can give play to the repro- 
ductive forces, more powerful than his own, which supply 
him’ with food. Beast, insect, bird, and fish take only 
what they find. Their increase is at the expense of their 
food, and when they have reached the existing limits of 
food, their food must increase before they can increase. 
But unlike that of any other living thing, the increase of 
man involves the increase of his food. If bears instead of 


Chap. 111. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 117 


men had been shipped from Europe to the North American 
continent, there would now be no more bears than in the 
time of Columbus, and possibly fewer, for bear food would 
not have been increased nor the conditions of bear life ex- 
tended, by the bear immigration, but probably the reverse. 
But within the limits of the United States alone, there are 
now forty-five millions of men where then there were only a 
few hundred thousand, and yet there is now within that 
territory much more food per capita for the forty-five mill- 
ions than there was then for the few hundred thousand. It 
is not the increase of food that has caused this increase of 
men; but the increase of men that has brought about the 
increase of food. There is more food, simply because 
there are more men. 

Here is a difference between the animal and the man. 
Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the more 
jay-hawks the fewer chickens, while the more men the more 
chickens. Both the seal and the man eat salmon, but when 
a seal takes a salmon there is a salmon the less, and were 
seals to increase past a certain point salmon must diminish ; 
while by placing the spawn of the salmon under favorable 
conditions man can so increase the number of salmon as to 
more than make up for all he may take, and thus, no matter 
how much men may increase, their increase need never out- 
run the supply of salmon. 

In short, while all through the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms the limit of subsistence is independent of the 
thing subsisted, with man the limit of subsistence is, within 
the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine, depend- 
ent upon man himself. And this being the case, the analogy 
which it is sought to draw between the lower forms of life | 
and man manifestly fails. While vegetables and animals 
do press against the limits of subsistence, man cannot 
press against the limits of his subsistence until the limits 
of the globe are reached. Observe, this is not merely true 
of the whole, but of all the parts. As we cannot reduce 
the level of the smallest bay or harbor without reducing the 
level not merely of the ocean with which it communicates, 


118 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Rooke hh: 


but of all the seas and oceans of the world, so the limit of 
subsistence in any particular place is not the physical limit 
of that place, but the physical limit of the globe. Fifty 
square miles of soil will in the present state of the produc- 
tive arts yield subsistence for only some thousands of people, 
but on the fifty square miles which comprise the city of 
London some three and a half millions of people are main- 
tained, and subsistence increases as population increases. 
So far as the limit of subsistence is concerned, London 
may grow to a population of a hundred millions, or five 
hundred millions, or a thousand millions, for she draws for 
subsistence upon the whole globe, and the limit which 
subsistence sets to her growth in population is the limit of 
the globe to furnish food for its inhabitants. 

But here will arise another idea from which the Mal- 
thusian theory derives great support—that of the diminish- 
ing productiveness of land. As conclusively proving the 
law of diminishing productiveness it is said in the 
current treatises. that were it not true that beyond a 
certain point land yields less and less to additional 
applications of labor and capital, increasing population ~ 
would not cause any extension of cultivation, but that 
all the increased supplies needed could and would be 
raised without taking into cultivation any fresh ground. 
Assent to this seems to involve assent to the doctrine that 
the difficulty of obtaining subsistence must increase with 
increasing population. 

But I think the necessity is only in seeming. If the 
proposition be analyzed it will be seen to belong to a class 
that depend for validity upon an implied or suggested 
qualification—a truth relatively, which taken absolutely 
becomes a non-truth. For that man cannot exhaust or 
lessen the powers of nature follows from the indestructi- 
bility of matter and the persistence of force. Production 
and consumption are only relative terms. Speaking abso- 
lutely, man neither produces nor consumes. The whole 
human race, were they to labor to infinity, could not make 
this rolling sphere one atom heavier or one atom lighter, 


Chap. III. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 119 


could not add to or diminish by one iota the sum of the 
forces whose everlasting circling produces all motion and 
sustains all life. As the water that we take from the ocean 
must again return to the ocean, so the food we take from the 
reservoirs of nature is, from the moment we take it, on its 
way back to those reservoirs. What we draw from a limited 
extent of land may temporarily reduce the productiveness 
of that land, because the return may be to other land, or 
may be divided between that land and other land, or, per- 
haps, all land; but this possibility lessens with increasing 
area, and ceases when the whole globe is considered. That 
the earth could maintain a thousand billions of people as 
easily as a thousand millions is a necessary deduction from 
the manifest truths that, at least so far as our agency is 
concerned, matter is eternal and force must forever con- 
tinue toact. Life does not use up the forces that maintain 
life. Wecome into the material universe bringing nothing; 
we take nothing away when we depart. The human being, 
physically considered, is but a transient form of matter, a 
changing mode of motion. The matter remains and the 
force persists. Nothing is lessened, nothing is weakened. 
And from this it follows that the limit to the population 
of the globe can only be the limit of space. 

Now this limitation of space—this danger that the human 
race may increase beyond the possibility of finding elbow 
room—is so far off as to have for us no more practical in- 
terest than the recurrence of the glacial period or the final 
extinguishment of the sun. Yet remote and shadowy as it 
is, itis this possibility which gives to the Malthusian theory 
its apparently self-evident character. But if we follow it, 
even this shadow will disappear. It, also, springs from a 
false analogy. That vegetable and animal life tend to press 
against the limits of space does not prove the same tendency 
in human life. 

Granted that man is only a more highly developed ani- 
mal; that the ring-tailed monkey is a distant relative who 
has gradually developed acrobatic tendencies, and the 
hump-backed whale a far-off connection who in early life 


——— 


120 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 


took to the sea—granted that back of these he is kin to the 
vegetable, and is still subject to the same laws as plants, 
fishes, birds, and beasts. Yet there is still this difference 
between man and all other animals—he is the only animal 
whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that 
is never satisfied. The wants of every other living thing 
are uniform and fixed. The ox of to-day aspires to no 
more than did the ox when man first yoked him. The sea 
eull of the English Channel who poises himself above the 
swift steamer, wants no better food or lodging than the gulls 
who circled round as the keels of Czesar’s galleys first grated 
on a British beach. Of all that nature offers them, be it 
ever so abundant, all living things save man can only take, 
and only care for, enough to supply wants which are defi- 
nite and fixed. The only use they can make of additional 
supplies or additional opportunities is to multiply. 

But not so with man. No sooner are his animal wants 
satisfied, than new wants arise. Food he wants first, as 
does the beast; shelter next, as does the beast; and 
these given, his reproductive instincts assert their sway, 
as do those of the beast. But here man and beast part 
company. The beast never goes further; the man has 
but set his feet on the first step of an infinite progression 
—a progression upon which the beast never enters; a pro- 
gression away from and above the beast. 

The demand for quantity once satisfied, he seeks quality. 
The very desires that he has in common with the beast 
become extended, refined, exalted. It is not merely 
hunger, but taste, that seeks gratification in food; in 
clothes, he seeks not merely comfort, but adornment; 
the rude shelter becomes a house; the undiscriminating 
sexual attraction begins to transmute itself into subtile 
influences, and the hard and common stock of animal life 
to blossom and to bloom into shapes of delicate beauty. 
As power to gratify his wants increases, so does aspiration 
erow. Held down to lower levels of desire, Lucullus will 
sup with Lucullus; twelve boars turn on spits that Antony’s 
mouthful of meat may be done to a turn; every kingdom of 


Chap. III. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 121 


Nature. be ransacked to add to Cleopatra’s charms, and 
marble colonnades and hanging gardens and pyramids that 
rival the hills arise. Passing into higher forms of desire, 
, that which slumbered in the plant and fitfully stirred in the 
_beast, awakes in the man. The eyes of the mind are 
opened, and he longs to know. He braves the scorching 
jheat of the desert and the icy blasts of the polar sea, but 
not for food; he watches all night, but it is to trace the 
circling of the eternal stars. He adds toil to toil, to gratify 
a hunger no animal has felt; to assuage a thirst no beast 
can know. 

Out upon nature, in upon himself, back through the mists 
that shroud the past, forward into the darkness that over- 
hangs the future, turns the restless desire that arises when 
the animal wants slumber in satisfaction. Beneath things, 
he seeks the law; he would know how the globe was forged 
and the stars were hung, and trace to their origins the 
springs of life. And, then, as the man developes his 
nobler nature, there arises the desire higher yet—the 
passion of passions, the hope of hopes—the desire that he, 
even he, may somehow aid in making life better and brighter, 
in destroying want and sin, sorrow and shame. He masters 
and curbs the animal; he turns his back upon the feast and 
renounces the place of power; he leaves it to others to 
accumulate wealth, to gratify pleasant tastes, to bask 
themselves in the warm sunshine of the brief day. He 
works for those he never saw and never can see; for a fame, 
or may be but for a scant justice, that can only come long 
after the clods have rattled upon his coffin lid. He toilsin 
the advance, where it is cold, and there is little cheer from 
men, and the stones are sharp and the brambles thick. 
Amid the scoffs of the present and the sneers that stab like 
knives, he builds for the future; he cuts the trail that pro- 
gressive humanity may hereafter broaden into a highroad. 
{nto higher, grander spheres desire mounts and beckons, 
and a star that rises in the east leads him on. Lo! the 
pulses of the man throb with the yearnings of the god—he 
would aid in the process of the suns! 


122 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Rok IL 


Is not the gulf too wide for the analogy to span? Give 
more food, open fuller conditions of life, and the vegeta- 
ble or animal can but multiply; the man will develope. In 
the one the expansive force can but extend existence in new 
numbers; in the other, it will inevitably tend to extend ex- 
istence in higher forms and wider powers. Man is an 
animal; but he is an animal plus something else. He is 
the mythic earth tree, whose roots are in the ground, but 
whose topmost branches may blossom in the heavens! 

Whichever way it be turned, the reasoning by which this 
theory of the constant tendency of population to press 
against the limits of subsistence is supported shows an un- 
warranted assumption, an undistributed middle, as the 
logicians would say acts do not warrant it, analogy does 
not countenance it. It is a pure chimera of the imagina- 
tion, such as those that for a long time prevented men from 
recognizing the rotundity and motion of the earth. It is 
just such a theory as that underneath us everything not 
fastened to the earth must fall off; as that a ball dropped 
from the mast of a ship in motion must fall behind the 
mast; as that a live fish placed in a vessel full of water will 
displace no water. It is as unfounded, if not as grotesque, 
as an assumption we can imagine Adam might have made 
had he been of an arithmetical turn of mind and figured 
on the growth of his first baby from the rate of its early 
months. From the fact that-at birth it weighed ten pounds 
and in eight months thereafter twenty pounds, he might, 
with the arithmetical knowlege which some sages have sup- 
posed him to possess, have ciphered out a result quite as 
striking as that of Mr. Malthus; namely, that by the time it 
got to be ten years old it would be as heavy as an ox, at 
twelve as heavy as an elephant, and at thirty would weigh 
no less than 175,716,339,548 tons. 

The fact is, there is no more reason for us to trouble 
ourselves about the pressure of population upon subsistence 
than there was for Adam to worry himself about the rapid 
erowth of his baby. So far as an inference is really war- 
ranted by facts and suggested by analogy, it is that the law 


Chap. 111. INFERENCES FROM ANALOGY. 123 


of population includes such beautiful adaptations as inves- 
tigation has already shown in other natural laws, and that 
we are no more warranted in assuming that the instinct of 
reproduction, in the natural development of society, tends 
to produce misery and vice, than we would be in assuming 
that the force of gravitation must hurl the moon to the 
earth and the earth to the sun, or than in assuming from 
the contraction of water with reductions of temperature 
down to 32 degrees that rivers and lakes must freeze to the 
bottom with every frost, and the temperate regions of earth 
be thus rendered uninhabitable by even moderate winters. 
That, besides the positive and prudential checks of Malthus, 
there is a third check which comes into play with the ele- 
vation of the standard of comfort and the development of 
the intellect, is pointed to by many well-known facts. The 
proportion of births is notoriously greater in new settle- 
ments, where the struggle with nature leaves little oppor- 
tunity for intellectual life, and among the poverty-bound 
classes of older countries, who in the midst of wealth are 
deprived of all its advantages and reduced to all but an 
animal existence, than it is among the classes to whom 
the increase of wealth has brought independence, leisure, 
comfort, and a fuller and more varied life. This fact, long 
ago recognized in the homely adage, ‘‘a rich man for luck, 
and a poor man for children,” was noted by Adam Smith, 
who says it is not uncommon to find a poor half-starved 
Highland woman has been the mother of twenty-three or 
twenty-four children, and is everywhere so clearly percepti- 
ble that it is only necessary to allude to it. 

If the real law of population is thus indicated, as I think 
it must be, then the tendency to increase, instead of being 
always uniform, is strong where a greater population would 
give increased comfort, and where the perpetuity of the 
race is threatened by the mortality induced by adverse con- 
' ditions, but weakens just as the higher development of the 
individual becomes possible and the perpetuity of the race 
is assured. In other words, the law of population accords 
with and is subordinate to the law of intellectual develop- 


124 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book I. 


ment, and any danger that human beings may be brought 
into a world where they cannot be provided for, arises not 
from the ordinances of nature, but from social mal-adjust- 
ments that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want. 
The truth of this will, I think, be conclusively demonstrated 
when, after having cleared the ground, we trace out the 
true laws of social growth. But it would disturb the nat- 
ural order of the argument to anticipate them now. If I 
have succeeded in maintaining a negative—in showing that 
the Malthusian theory is not proved by the reasoning by 
which it is supported—it is enough for the present. In 
the next chapter I propose to take the affirmative and show 
that it is disproved by facts. 


CHUARP TE Risel-V;.. 
DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 


So deeply rooted and thoroughly entwined with the 
reasonings of the current political economy is this doctrine 
that increase of population tends to reduce wages and pro- 
duce poverty, so completely does it harmonize with many 
popular notions, and so hable is it to recur in different 
shapes, that I have thought it necessary to meet and show 
in some detail the insufficiency of the arguments by which 
itis supported, before bringing it to the test of facts: for the 
general acceptance of this theory adds a most striking in- 
stance to the many which the history of thought affords of 
how easily men ignore facts when blindfolded by a pre- 
accepted theory. 

To the supreme and final test of facts we can easily 
bring this theory. Manifestly the question whether in- 
crease of population necessarily tends to reduce wages and 
cause want, is simply the question whether it tends to 
reduce the amount of wealth that can be produced by a 
given amount of labor, 

This is what the current doctrine holds. The accepted 
theory is, that the more that is required from nature the 
‘less generously does she respond, so that doubling the ap- 
plication of labor will not double the product; and hence, 
increase of population must tend to reduce wages and 
deepen poverty, or, in the phrase of Malthus, must result 
in vice and misery. To quote the language of John Stuart 
Mill: 


‘*A greater number of people cannot, in any given state of civiliza- 
tion, be collectively so well provided for as a smaller. The 
niggardliness of nature; not the injustice of society, is the cause of 
the penalty attached to over-population. An unjust distribution of 
wealth does not aggravate the evil, but, at most, causes it to be some- 


126 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book. Th 


what earlier felt. It is in vain to say, that all mouths which the 
increase of mankind calls into existence bring with them hands. The 
new mouths require as much food as the old ones, and the hands do 
not produce as much. If all instruments of production were held in 
joint property by the whole people, and the produce divided with per- 
fect equality among them, and if in a society thus constituted, industry 
were as energetic and the produce as ample as at the present time, there 
would be enough to make all the existing population extremely com- 
fortable; but when that population had doubled itself, as, with existing 
habits of the people, under such an encouragement, it undoubtedly 
would in little more than twenty years, what would then be their con- 
dition ? Unless the arts of production were in the same time improved 
in an almost unexampled degree, the inferior soils which must be re- 
sorted to, and the more laborious and scantily remunerative cultivation 
which must be employed on the superior soils, to procure food for so 
much larger a population, would, by an insuperable necessity, render 
every individual in the community poorer than before. If the popu- 
lation continued to increase at the same rate, a time would soon arrive 
when no one would have more than mere necessaries, and, soon after, 
a time when no one would have a sufficiency of those, and the further 
increase of population would be arrested by death.’’* 

All this I deny. I assert that the very reverse of these 
propositions is true. I assert thatin any given state of 
civilization a greater number of people can collectively be 
better provided for than a smaller. I assert that the in- 
justice of society, not the niggardliness of nature, is the 
cause of the want and misery which the current theory 
attributes to over-population. Lassert that the new mouths 
which an increasing population calls into existence require 
no more food than the old ones, while the hands they bring 
with them can in the natural order of things produce more. 
I assert that, other things being equal, the greater the 
population, the greater the comfort which an equitable 
distribution of wealth would give to each individual. I 
assert that ina state of equality the natural increase of pop- 
ulation would constantly tend to make every individual 
richer instead of poorer. 

I thus distinctly join issue, and submit the question to 
the test of facts. 

But observe (for even at the risk of repetition I wish tc 
warn the reader against a confusion of thought that is ob- 
servable even in writers of great reputation) that the 


question of fact into which this issue‘resolves itself is not 


— 


{ Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. XIII, Sec. 2. 


Chap. IV DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 127 


in what stage of population is most subsistence produced ? 
but in what stage of population is there exhibited the 
greatest power of producing wealth? For the power of 
producing wealth in any form is the power of producing 
subsistence—and the consumption of wealth in any form, 
or of wealth-producing power, is equivalent to the con- 
sumption of subsistence. I have, for instance, some money 
in my pocket. With it I may buy either food or cigars or 
jewelry or theater tickets, and just as I expend my money 
do I determine labor to the production of food, of cigars, 
of jewelry, or of theatrical representations. A set of 
diamonds has a value equal to so many barrels of flour— 
that is to say, it takes on the average as much labor to pro- 
duce the diamonds as it would to produce so much flour. 
If I load my wife with diamonds, it is as much an exertion 
of subsistence-producing power as though I had devoted 
so much food to purposes of ostentation. If I keep a foot- 
man, I take a possible plowman from the plow. The 
breeding and maintenance of a race-horse require care and 
labor which would suffice for the breeding and mainten- 
ance of many work-horses. The. destruction of wealtk 
involved in a general illumination or the firing of a salute 
is equivalent to the burning up of so much food; the keep- 
ing of a regiment of soldiers, or of a war-ship and he1 
crew, is the diversion to unproductive uses of labor that 
could produce subsistence for many thousands of people. 
Thus the power of any population to produce the neces- 
saries of life is not to be measured by the necessaries of 
life actually produced, but by the expenditure of power in 
all modes. . 

There is no necessity for abstract reasoning. The ques- 
tion is one of simple fact. Does the relative power of 
producing wealth decrease with the increase of popula- 
tion ? 

The facts are so patent that it is only necessary to call 
attention to them. We have, in modern times, seen many 
communities advance in population. Have they not at 
the same time advanced even more rapidly in wealth? 


128 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE, Book Iz 


We see many communities still increasing in population. 
Are they not also increasing their wealth still faster? Is 
there any doubt that while England has been increasing 
her population at the rate of two per cent. per annum, her 
wealth has been growing in still greater proportion? Is 
it not true that while the population of the United States has 
been doubling every twenty-nine* years her wealth has been 
doubling at much shorter intervals? Is it not true that 
under similar conditions—that is to say, among communi- 
ties of similar people in a similar stage of civiliza- 
tion—the most densely populated community is also 
‘the richest? Are not the more densely populated LEast- 
ern States richer in proportion to population than the 
more sparsely populated Western or Southern States? Is 
not England, where population is even denser than in the 
Eastern States of the Union, also richer in proportion? 
Where will you find wealth devoted with the most lavish- 
ness to non-productive use—costly buildings, fine furniture, 
luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure gardens and 
yachts? Is it not where population is densest, rather than 
where it is sparsest ? Where will you find in largest propor- 
tion those whom the general production suffices to keep 
without productive labor on their part—men of income and 
of elegant leisure, thieves, policemen, menial servants, 
lawyers, men of letters, and the hike? Is it not where 
population is dense rather than where it is sparse? 
Whence is it that capital overflows for remunerative in- 
vestment? Is it not from densely populated countries 
to sparsely populated countries? These things conclus- 
ively show that wealth is greatest where population is 
densest; that the production of wealth to a given amount of 
Jabor increases as population increases. These things are 
apparent wherever we turn our eyes. On the same level of 
civilization, the same stage of the productive arts, govern- 
ment, etc, the most populous countries are always the 
most wealthy. 


* The rate up to 1860 was 35 per cent. each decade” 


Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 129 


Let us take a particular case, and that a case which of all 
that can be cited seems at first blush best to support the 
theory we are considering—the case of a community where, 
while population has largely increased, wages have greatly 
decreased, and it is not a matter of dubious inference but 
of obvious fact that the generosity of nature has lessened. 
That community is California. When upon the discovery 
of gold the first wave of immigration poured into Cal- 
fornia it found a country in which nature was in the most 
generous mood from the river banks and bars the glit- 
tering deposits of thousands of years could be taken by 
the most primitive appliances, in amounts which made an 
ounce ($16) per day only ordinary wages. The plains, coy- 
ered with nutritious grasses, were alive with countless herds 
of horses and cattle, so plenty that any traveler was at 
liberty to shift his saddle to a fresh steed, or to kill a bul- 
lock if he needed a steak, leaving the hide, its only valu- 
able part, for the owner. From the rich soil which came 
first under cultivation, the mere plowing and sowing 
brought crops that in older countries, if procured at ali, can 
only be procured by the most thorough manuring and cul- 
tivation. In early California, amidst this profusion of 
nature, wages and interest were higher than anywhere else 
in the world. 

This virgin profusion of nature has been steadily giving 
way before the greater and greater demands which an 
increasing population has made upon it. Poorer and poorer 
diggings have been worked, until now no diggings worth 
speaking of can be found, and gold mining requires much 
capital, large skill, and elaborate machinery, and involves 
great risks. ‘‘ Horses cost money,”’ and cattle bred on the 
sage-brush plains of Nevada are Lroight by railroad across 
the mountains and killed in San Francisco shambles, while 
farmers are beginning to save their straw and look for 
manure, and land is in cultivation which will hardly yield 
a crop three years out of four without irrigation. At the 
same time wages and interest have steadily gone down. 
Many men are now glad to work for a week for less than 


130 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book IL 


they once demanded for the day, and money is loaned by 
the year for a rate which once would hardly have been 
thought extortionate by the month. Is the connection 
between the reduced productiveness of nature and the 
reduced rate of wages that of cause and effect? Is 
it true that wages are lower because labor yields less 
wealth? 

On the contrary! Instead of the wealth-producing power 
of labor being less in California in 1879 than in 1849, I 
am convinced that it is greater. And, it seems to me, that 
no one who considers how enormously during these years 
the efficiency of labor in California has been increased by 
roads, wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, 
and machinery of all kinds; by a closer connection with 
the rest of the world; and by the numberless economies 
resulting from a larger population, can doubt that the re- 
turn which labor receives from nature in California is on 
the whole much greater now than it was in the days of un- 
exhausted placers and virgin soil—the increase in the 
power of the human factor having more than compensated 
for the decline in the power of the natural factor. That 
this conclusion is the correct one is proved by many facts 
which show that the consumption of wealth is now much 
- greater, as compared with the number of laborers, than it 
was then. Instead of a population composed almost ex- 
clusively of men in the prime of life, a large proportion 
of women and children are now supported, and other 
non-producers have increased in much greater ratio than 
the population; luxury has grown far more than wages have 
fallen; where the best houses were cloth and paper shanties, 
are now mansions whose magnificence rivals European 
palaces; there are liveried carriages on the streets of San 
Francisco and pleasure yachts on her bay; the class who 
can live sumptuously on their incomes has steadily grown; 
there are rich men beside whom the richest of the earlier 
years would seem little better than paupers—in short, there 
are on every hand the most striking and conclusive evi- 
dences that the production and consumption of wealth 


Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 131 


have increased with even greater rapidity than the in- 
crease of population, and that if any class obtains less 
it is solely because of the greater inequality of distribu- 
tion. 

What is obvious in this particular instance is obvious 
where the survey is extended. The richest countries are 
not those where nature is most prolific; but those where 
labor is most efficient—not Mexico, but Massachusetts; not 
Brazil, but England. The countries where population is 
densest and presses hardest upon the capabilities of nature, 
are, other things being equal, the countries where the larg- 
est proportion of the produce can be devoted to luxury ana 
the support of non-producers, the countries where capital 
overflows, the countries that upon exigency, such as war, 
can stand the greatest drain. That the production of 
wealth must, in proportion to the labor employed, be 
greater in a densely populated country like England than 
in new countries where wages and interest are higher, is 
evident from the fact that, though a much smaller propor- 
tion of the population is engaged in productive labor, a 
much larger surplus is available for other purposes than 
that of supplying physical needs. In a new country the 
whole available force of the community is devoted to pro- 
duction—there is no well man who does not do productive 
work of some kind, no well woman exempt from household 
tasks. There are no paupers or beggars, no idle rich, no 
class whose labor is devoted to ministering to the conven- 
ience or caprice of the rich, no purely literary or scientific 
class, no criminal class who live by preying upon society, 
no large class maintained to guard society against them. 
Yet with the whole force of the community thus devoted to 
production, no such consumption of wealth in proportion to 
the whole population takes place, or can be afforded, as 
goes on in the old country; for, though the condition of the 
lowest class is better, and there is no one who cannot get a 
living, there is no one who gets much more—few or none 
who can live in anything like what would be called luxury, 
or even comfort, in the older country. That is to say, that 


132 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE Book £1 


in the older country the consumption of wealth in propor- 
tion to population is greater, although the proportion of 
labor devoted to the production of wealth is less—or that 
fewer laborers produce more wealth; for wealth must be 
produced before it can be consumed. 

It may, however, be said, that the superior wealth of 
older countries is due not to superior productive power, but 
to the accumulations of wealth which the new country has 
not yet had time to make. 

It will be well for a moment to consider this idea of 
accumulated wealth. The truth is, that wealth can be 
accumulated but to a slight degree, and that communities 
really live, as the vast majority of individuals live, from 
hand to mouth. Wealth will not bear much accumulation; 
except in a few unimportant forms it will not keep. The 
matter of the universe, which, when worked up by labor 
into desirable forms, constitutes wealth, is constantly tend- 
ing back to its original state. Some forms of wealth will 
last for a few hours, some for a few days, some for a 
few months, some for a few years; and there are very few 
forms of wealth that can be passed from one generation to 
another. Take wealth in some of its most useful and per- 
manent forms—-ships, houses, railways, machinery. Unless 
labor is constantly exerted in preserving and renewing 
them, they will almost immediately become useless. Stop 
labor in any community, and wealth would vanish almost 
as the jet of a fountain vanishes when the flow of water is 
shut off. Let labor again exert itself, and wealth will 
almost as immediately re-appear. This has been long no- 
ticed where war or other calamity has swept away wealth, 
leaving population unimpaired. There is not less wealth 
in London to-day because of the great fire of 1666; nor yet 
is there less wealth in Chicago because of the great fire of 
1870. On those fire-swept acres have arisen, under the 
hand of labor, more magnificent buildings, filled with 
greater stocks of goods; and the stranger who, ignorant of 
the history of the city, passes along those stately avenues 
would not dream that a few years ago all lay so black and 


Chap. IV. DISPROOF OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY. 133 


bare. The same principle—that wealth is constantly re- 
created—is obvious in every new city. Given the same pop- 
ulation and the same efficiency of labor, and the town of yes- 
terday will possess and enjoy as much as the town founded 
by the Romans. No one who has seen Melbourne or San 
Francisco can doubt that if the population of England were 
transported to New Zealand, leaving all accumulated wealth 
behind, New Zealand would soon be as rich as England is 
now; or, conversely, that if the population of England 
were reduced to the sparseness of the present population of 
New Zealand, in spite of accumulated wealth, they would 
soon be as poor. Accumulated wealth seems to play just 
about such a part in relation to the social organism as 
accumulated nutriment does to the physical organism. 
Some accumulated wealth is necessary, and to a certain ex- 
tent it may be drawn upon in exigencies; but the wealth 
produced by past generations can no more account for the 
consumption of the present than the dinners he ate last year 
can supply a man with present strength. 

But without these considerations, which I allude to 
more for their general than for their special bearing, it is 
evident that superior accumulations of wealth can only ac- 
count for greater consumption of wealth in cases where 
accumulated wealth is decreasing, and that wherever the 
volume of accumulated wealth is maintained, and even 
more obviously where it is increasing, a greater consump- 
tion of wealth must imply a greater production of wealth. 
Now, whether we compare different communities with each 
other, or the same community at different times, it is ob- 
vious that the progressive state, which is marked by in- 
crease of population, is also marked by an increased con- 
sumption and an increased accumulation of wealth, not 


merely in the aggregate, but per capita. And hence, in- / 


crease of population, so far as it has yet anywhere gone, 
does not mean a reduction, but an increase, in the average 
production of wealth. 

And the reason of this is obvious. For, even if the in- 
crease of population does reduce the power of the natural 


134 POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE. Book I1. 


factor of wealth, by compelling a resort to poorer soils, 
etc., it yet so vastly increases the power of the human fac- 
tor as to more than compensate. Twenty men working to- 
gether will, where nature is niggardly, produce more than 
twenty times the wealth that one man can produce where 
‘nature is most bountiful. The denser the population the 
more minute becomes the subdivision of labor, the greater 
the economies of production and distribution, and, hence, 
the very reverse of the Malthusian doctrine is true; and, 
within the limits in which we have reason to suppose in-. 
crease would still go on, in any given state of civilization a. 
greater number of people can produce a larger proportion- 
ate amount of wealth, and more fully supply their wants, 
than can a smaller number | 
Look simply at the facts. Can anything be clearer than 
that the cause of the poverty which festers in the centers 
of civilization is not in the weakness of the productive 
forces? In countries where poverty is deepest, the forces of 
’ production are evidently strong enough, if fully employed, 
to provide for the lowest not merely comfort but luxury. 
The industrial paralysis, the commercial depression which 
curses the civilized world to-day, evidently springs from no 
lack of productive power. Whatever be the trouble, it is 
clearly not in the want of ability to produce wealth. 

It is this very fact—that want appears where productive 
power is greatest and the production of wealth is largest— 
that constitutes the enigma which perplexes the civilized 
world, and which we are trying to unravel. Evidently the 
Malthusian theory, which attributes want tothe decrease of 
productive power, will not explain it. That theory is 
utterly inconsistent with all the facts. It is really a gratu- 
itous attribution to the laws of God of results which, even 
from this examination, we may infer really spring from the 
mal-adjustments of men—an inference which, as we pro- 
ceed, will become a demonstration. For we have yet to 
find what does produce poverty amid advancing wealth. 


ISiaGnncr (iae 


THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. 


CHAPTER I.—THE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTRIBU- 
TION—NECESSARY RELATION OF THESE LAWS. 
CHAPTER '  II.—RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 

CHAPTER III.—INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 

CHAPTER IV.—OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFTEN MIS 
TAKEN FOR INTEREST. 

CHAPTER V.—THE LAW OF INTEREST. 

CHAPTER VI.—WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 

CHAPTER VII.—CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF THESE LAWS. 

; CHAPTER VIII.—THE STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED, 


The machines that are first invented to perform any particular moyement are always 
the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that with fewer wheels, 
with fewer principles of motion than had originally been employed, the same effects 
may be more easily produced. The first philosophical systems, in the same manner, are 
always the most complex, and a particular connecting chain, or principle, is generally 
thought necessary to unite every two seemingly disjointed appearances; but it often 
happens that one great connecting principle is afterward found to be sufficient to bind 
together all the discordant phenomena that occur in a whole species of things.—Adam 
Smith, Essay on the Principles which Lead and Direct Philosophical Inquiries, as 
Itlustrated by the History of Astronomy, 


CC ha bese e/a ba Lr at Be 


THE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION—-THE 
NECESSARY RELATION OF THESE LAWS. 


The preceding examination has, I think, conclusively 
shown that the explanation currently given, in the name of 
political economy, of the problem we are attempting to 
solve, is no explanation at all. 

That with material progress wages fail to increase, but 
rather tend to decrease, cannot be explained by the theory 
that the increase of laborers constantly tends to divide into 
smaller portions the capital sum from which wages are paid. 
For, as we have seen, wages do not come from capital, but 
are the direct produce of labor. Each productive laborer, 
as he works, creates his wages, and with every additional 
laborer there is an addition to the true wages fund—an 
addition to the common stock of wealth, which, generally 
speaking, is considerably greater than the amount he draws 
in wages. 

Nor, yet, can it be explained by the theory that nature 
yields less to the increasing drafts which an increasing 
population make upon her; for the increased efficiency of 
labor makes the progressive state a state of continually in- 
creasing production per capita, and the countries of densest 
population, other things being equal, are always the coun- 
tries of greatest wealth. 

So far, we have only increased the perplexities of the 
problem. We have overthrown a theory which did, in 
some sort of fashion, explain existing facts; but in doing 
so have only made existing facts seem more inexplicable. 
It is as though, while the Ptolemaic theory was yet in its 
strength, it had been proved simply that the sun and stars 
do not revolve about the earth. The phenomena of day and 


7 


+ 
- 


138 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book Til: 


night, and of the apparent motion of the celestial bodies, 
' would yet remain unexplained, to inevitably reinstate the 
old theory unless a better one took its place. Our reason- 
ing has led us to the conclusion that each productive la- 
borer produces his own wages, and that increase in the 
number of laborers should increase the wages of each; 
whereas, the apparent facts are that there are many laborers 
who cannot obtain remunerative employment, and that in- 
crease in the number of laborers brings diminution of 
wages. We have, in short, proved that wages ought to be 
highest where in reality they are lowest. 

Nevertheless, even in doing this we have made some- 
progress. Next to finding what we look for, is to discover 
where it is useless to look. We have at least narrowed the 
field of inquiry. For this, at least, is now clear—that the 
cause which, in spite of the enormous increase of produc- 
tive power, confines the great body of producers to the 
least share of the product upon which they will consent to 
live, is not the limitation of capital, nor yet the limitation of 
the powers of nature which respond to labor. As itis not, 
therefore, to be found in the laws which bound the produc- 
tion of wealth, it must be sought in the laws which govern 
distribution. To them let us turn. 


It will be necessary to review in its main branches the 
whole subject of the distribution of wealth. To discover 
the cause which, as population increases and the produc- 
tive arts advance, deepens the poverty of the lowest class, 
we inust find the law which determines what part of the 
produce is distributed to labor as wages. To find the law 
of wages, or at least to make sure when we have found it, 
we must also determine the laws which fix the part of the 
produce which goes to capital and the part which goes to 
land owners, for as land, labor, and capital join in producing 
wealth, it is between these three that the produce must be 
divided. | 

What is meant by the produce or production of a com- 
munity is the sum of the wealth produced by that 


Chap. I. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 139 


community—the general fund from which (as long as pre- 
viously existing stock is not lessened) all consumption must 
be met and all revenues drawn. As I have already ex- 


plained, production does not merely mean the making of \~ 


things, but includes the increase of value gained by trans- 
porting or exchanging things. There is a produce of 
wealth in a purely commercial community, as there is in a 
purely agricultural or manufacturing community; and in 
the one case, as in the others, some part of this produce will 
go to capital, some part to labor, and some part, if land 
have any value, to the owners of land. Asa matter of fact, 
a portion of the wealth produced is constantly going to the 
replacement of capital, which is constantly consumed and 
constantly replaced. But it is not necessary to take this 
into account, as it is eliminated by considering capital 
as continuous, which, in speaking or thinking of it, we 
habitually do. When we speak of the produce, we 
mean, therefore, that part of the wealth produced above 
what is necessary to replace the capital consumed in pro- 
duction; and when we speak of interest, or the return to 
capital, we mean what goes to capital after its replacement 
or maintenance. 

It is, further, a matter of fact, that in every community 
which has passed the most primitive stage some portion of 
the produce is taken in taxation and consumed by govern- 
ment. But it is not necessary, in seeking the laws of 
distribution, to take this into consideration. We may con- 
sider taxation either as not existing, or as by so much 
reducing the produce. And, so, too, of what is taken from 
the produce by certain forms of monopoly, which will be 
considered in a subsequent chapter (Chap. IV), and which 
exercise powers analogous to taxation. After we have dis- 
covered the laws of distribution we can then see what 
bearing, if any, taxation has upon them. 

We must discover these laws of distribution for our- 
selves—or, at least, two out of the three. For, that they 
are not (at least as a whole) correctly apprehended by the 
current political economy, may be seen, irrespective of our 


140 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IIL. 


preceding examination of one of them, in any of the stand- 
ard treatises. 

This is evident, in the first place, from the terminology 
employed. 

In all politico-economic works we are told that the three 
factors in production are land, labor, and capital, and that 
the whole produce is primarily distributed into three cor- 
responding parts. Three terms, therefore, are needed, 
each of which shall clearly express one of these parts to 
the exclusion of the others. Rent, as defined, clearly 
enough expresses the first of these parts—that which goes 
to the owners of land. Wages, as defined, clearly enough 
expresses the second—that part which constitutes the re- 
turn to labor. But as to the third term—that which 
should express the return to capital—there is in the stand- 
ard works a most puzzling ambiguity and confusion. 

Of words in common use, that which comes nearest to ex- 
clusively expressing the idea of return for the use of cap- 
ital, is interest, which, as commonly used, implies the re- 
turn for the use of capital, exclusive of any labor in its use 
or management, and exclusive of any risk, except such as 
may be involved in the security. The word profits, as com- 
monly used, is almost synonymous with revenue; it means 
a gain, an amount received in excess of an amount ex- 
pended, and frequently includes receipts that are properly 
rent; while it nearly always includes receipts which are 
properly wages, as well as compensations for the risk pecu- 
liar to the various uses of capital. Unless extreme violence 
is done to the meaning of the word, it cannot, therefore, be 
used in political economy to signify that share of the prod- 
uce which goes to capital, in contradistinction to those 
parts which go to labor and to land owners. 

Now, all this is recognized in the standard works on pos 
litical economy. Adam Smith well illustrates how wages 
and compensation for risk largely enter into profits, point- 
ing out how the large profits of apothecaries and smail 
retail dealers are in reality wages for their labor, and not 
interest on their capital; and how the great profits some- 


Chap. E. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 141 


times made in risky businesses, such as smuggling and the 
lumber trade, are really but compensations for risk, which, 
in the long run, reduce the returns to capital so used to 
the ordinary, or below the ordinary, rate. Similar illustra- 
tions are given in most of the subsequent works, where 
profit is formally defined in its common sense, with, per- 
haps, the exclusion of rent. In all these works, the reader 
is told that profits are made up of three elements—wages 
of superintendence, compensation for risk, and interest, or 
the return for the use of capital. 

Thus, neither in its common meaning, nor in the mean- 
ing expressly assigned to it in the current political econo- 
my, can profits have any place in the discussion of the 
distribution of wealth between the three factors of produc- 
tion. Hither in its common meaning or in the meaning 
expressly assigned to it, to talk about the distribution of 
wealth into rent, wages, and profits, is hke talking of the 
division of mankind into men, women, and human beings. | 

Yet, this, to the utter bewilderment of the reader, is 
what is done in all the standard works. After formally 
decomposing profits into wages of superintendence, com- 
pensation for risk, and interest—the net return for the use 
of capital—they proceed to treat of the. distribution- of 
wealth between the rent of land, the wages of labor, and 
the prorits of capital. 

I doubt not that there are thousands of men who have 
vainly puzzled their brains over this confusion of terms, 
and abandoned the effort in despair, thinking that as the 
fault could not be in such great thinkers, it must be in 
their own stupidity. If it is any consolation to such men, 
they may turn to Buckle’s ‘‘ History of Civilization,” and 
see how a man who certainly got a marvelously clear idea of 
what he read, and who had read carefully the principal 
economists from Smith down, was inextricably confused by 
this jumble of profits and interest. For Buckle (Vol. 1, 
Chap. II, and notes), persistently speaks of the distribu- 
tion of wealth into rent, wages, interest, and profits. 

And this is not to be wondered at. Hor, after formally 


142 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IEE 


decomposing profits into wages of superintendence, insur- 
ance, and interest, these economists, in assigning causes 
which fix the general rate of profit, speak of things which 
evidently affect only that part of profits which they have 
denominated interest; and then, in speaking of the rate of 
interest, either give the meaningless formula of supply and 
demand, or speak of causes which affect the compensation 
for risk; evidently using the word in its common sense, 
and not in the economic sense they have assigned to it, 
from which compensation for risk is eliminated. If the 
reader will take up John Stuart Mill’s ‘‘ Principles of Politi- 
cal Economy,” and compare the chapter on Profits (Book II, 
Chap. 15) with the chapter on Interest (Book III, Chap. 
23), he will see the confusion thus arising exemplified, in 
the case of the most logical of English economists, in a 
more striking manner than I would like to characterize. 

Now, such men have not been led into such confusion of 
thought without a cause. If they, one after another, have 
followed Dr. Adam Smith, as boys play ‘‘ follow my lead- 
er,” jumping where he jumped, and falling where he fell, 
it has been that there was a fence where he jumped and a 
hole where he fell. 

The difficulty from which this confusion has sprung is in 
the pre-accepted theory of wages. Yor reasons which I 
have before assigned, it has seemed to them a self-evident 
truth that the wages of certain classes of laborers depended 
upon the ratio between capital and the number of laborers. 
But there are certain kinds of reward for exertion to which 
this theory evidently will not apply, so the term wages has 
in use been contracted to include only wages in the narrow, 
common sense. This being the case, if the term interest 
were used (as consistently with their definitions it should 
have been used) to represent the third part of the division 
of the produce, all rewards of personal exertion, save those 
of what are commonly called wage-workers, would clearly 
have been left out. But by treating the division of wealth 
as between rent, wages, and profits, instead of between 
rent, wages, and interest, this difficulty is glossed over, all 


Chap. I THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 143 


wages which will not fall under the pre-accepted law of 
wages being vaguely grouped under profits, as wages of 
superintendence. 

To read carefully what economists say about the distri- 
bution of wealth is to see that, though they correctly define 
it, wages, as they use it in this connection, is what logi- 
cians would call an undistributed term—it does not mean 
all wages, but only some wages—viz., the wages of manual 
labor paid by an employer. So other wages are thrown over 
with the return to capital, and included under the term 
profits, and any clear distinction between the returns to 
capital and the returns to human exertion thus avoided. 
The fact is that the current political economy fails to 
give any clear and consistent account of the distribu- 
tion of wealth. The law of rent is clearly stated, but 
it stands unrelated. The rest is a confused and incoherent 
jumble. 

The very arrangement of these works shows this confusion 
and inconclusiveness of thought. In no politico-economic 
treatise that I know of are these laws of distribution brought 
together, so that the reader can take them in at a glance 
and recognize their relation to each other; but what is said 
about each one is enveloped in a mass of political and 
moral reflections and dissertations. And the reason is not 
far to seek. To bring together the three laws of distribu- 
tion as they are now taught, is to show at a glance that 
they lack necessary relation. 

The laws of the distribution of wealth are obviously laws 
of proportion, and must be so related to each other that 
any two being given the third may be inferred. For to say 
that one of the three parts of a whole is increased or de- 
creased, is to say that one or both of the other parts is, re- 
versely, decreased or increased. If Tom, Dick, and Harry 
are partners in business, the agreement which fixes the 
share of one in the profits must at the same time fix either 
the separate or the joint shares of the other two. To fix 
Tom’s share at 40 per cent, is to leave but 60 per cent to be 
divided between Dick and Harry. To fix Dick’s share ai 


144 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IIl, * 


40 per cent and Harry’s share at 35 per cent is to fix Tom’s 
share at 25 per cent. 

But between the laws of the. distribution of wealth, as 
laid down in the standard works, there is no such relation. 
If we fish them out and bring them together, we find them 
to be as follows: 

Wages are determined by the ratio between the amount 
of capital devoted to the payment and subsistence of labor 
and the number of laborers seeking employment. 

Rent is determined by the margin of cultivation; all 
lands yielding as rent that part of their produce which ex- 
ceeds what an equal application of labor and capital could 
procure from the poorest land in use. 

Interest is determined by the equation between the de- 
mands of borrowers and the supply of capital offered by 
lenders. Or (if we take what is given as the law of profits) 
it is determined by wages, falling as wages rise and rising 
as wages fall—or, to use the phrase of Mill, by the cost of 
labor to‘the capitalist. 

The bringing together of these current statements of the 
laws of the distribution of wealth shows at a glance that 
they lack the relation to each other which the true laws of 
distribution must have. They do not correlate and co- 
ordinate. Hence, at least two of these three laws are 
either wrongly apprehended or wrongly stated. This 
tallies with what we have already seen, that the current ap- 
prehension of the law of wages, and, inferentially, of the 
law of interest, will not bear examination. Let us, then, 
seek the true laws of the distribution of the produce of 
labor into wages, rent, and interest. The proof that we 
have found them will be in their correlation—that they 
meet, and relate, and mutually bound each other. 

With profits this inquiry has manifestly nothing to 
do. We want to find what it is that determines the divi- 
- sion of their joint produce between land, labor, and capital, 
and profits is not a term that refers exclusively to any one 
of these three divisions. Of the three parts into which 
profits are divided by political economists—namely, compen- 


Chap. 1. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 145 


sation for risk, wages of superintendence, and return for 
the use of capital—the latter falls under the term inter- 
est, which includes all the returns for the use of capital, 
and excludes everything else; wages of superintendence 
falls under the term wages, which includes all returns for 
human exertion, and excludes everything else; and compen- 
sation for risk has no place whatever, as risk is eliminated 
when all the transactions of a community are taken togeth- 
er. I shall, therefore, consistently with the definitions of 
political economists, use the term interest as signifying 
that part of the produce which goes to capital. 

To recapitulate: 

Land, labor, and capital are the factors of production. 
The term land includes all natural opportunities or forces; 
the term labor, all human exertion; and the term capital, 
all wealth used to produce more wealth. In returns to 
these three factors is the whole produce distributed. That 
part which goes to land owners as payment for the use of 
natural opportunities is called rent; that part which consti- 
tutes the reward of human exertion is called wages; and 
that part which constitutes the return for the use of capital 
is called interest. These terms mutually exclude each other. 
The income of any individual may be made up from any 
one, two, or all three of these sources; but in the effort tc 
discover the laws of distribution we must keep them sepa- 
rate. 


Let me premise the inquiry which we are about to un- 
dertake by saying that the miscarriage of political economy, 
which I think has now been abundantly shown, can, it 
seems to me, be traced to the adoption of an erroneous 
standpoint. Living and making their observations in a 
state of society in which a capitalist generally rents land 
and hires labor, and thus seems to be the undertaker or first 
mover in production, the great cultivators of the science 
have been led to look upon capital as the prime factor in 
production, land as its instrument, and labor as its agent or 
tool. This is apparent on every page—in the form and 


146 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book Tih 


course of their reasoning, in the character of their illustra- 
tions, and even in their choice of terms. Everywhere 
capital is the starting point, the capitalist the central figure. 
So far does this go that both Smith and Ricardo use the 
term ‘‘natural wages” to express the minimum upon 
which laborers can live; whereas, unless injustice is natural, 
all that the laborer produces should rather be held as his 
natural wages. This habit of looking upon capital as the 
employer of labor has led both to the theory that wages 
depend upon the relative abundance of capital, and to the 
theory that interest varies inversely with wages, while it 
has led away from truths that but for this habit would 
have been apparent. In short, the misstep which, so far as 
the great laws of distribution are concerned, has led politi- 
cal economy into the jungles, instead of upon the mountain 
tops, was taken when Adam Smith, in his first book, left the 
stand-point indicated in the sentence, ‘‘'The produce of 
labor constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labor,”’ 
to take that in which capital is considered as employing 
labor and paying wages. 

But when we consider the origin and natural sequence of 
things, this order is reversed; and capital instead of first is 
last; instead of being the employer of labor, it is in reality 
employed by labor. There must be land before labor can 
be exerted, and labor must be exerted before capital can be 
produced. Capital is a result of labor, and is used by 
labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the 
active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer 
of capital. Labor can only be exerted upon land, and it 
is from land that the matter which it transmutes into wealth 
must be drawn. Land therefore is the condition precedent, 
the field and material of labor. The natural order is land, 
labor, capital, and, instead of starting from capital as our 
initial point, we should start from land. 

_ There is another thing to be observed. Capital is not a 
necessary factor in production. Labor exerted upon land 
can produce wealth without the aid of capital, and in the 
necessary genesis of things must so produce wealth before 


Chap. 1. THEIR NECESSARY RELATION. 147 


eapital can exist. Therefore the law of rent and the law of 
wages must correlate each other and form a perfect whole 
without reference to the law of capital, as otherwise these 
laws would not fit the cases which can readily be imagined, 
and which to some degree actually exist, in which capital 
takes no part in production. And as capital is, as is often 
said, but stored-up labor, it is but a form of labor, a sub- 
division of the general term labor; and its law must be 
subordinate to, and independently correlate with, the law of 
Wages, so as to fit cases in which the whole produce is 
divided between labor and capital, without any deduction 
for rent. To resort to the illustration before used: The 
division of the produce between land, labor and capital 
must be as it would be between Tom, Dick, and Harry, if 
Tom and Dick were the original partners, and Harry came 
in but as an assistant to and sharer with Dick. 


CHAPTER II. 
RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 


The term rent, in its economic sense—that is, when used, 
as I am using it, to distinguish that part of the produce 
which accrues to the owners of land or other natural capa- 
bilities by virtue of their ownership—differs in meaning 
from the word rent as commonly used. In some respects 
this economic meaning is narrower than the common mean- 
ing; in other respects it is wider. 

It is narrower in this: In common speech, we apply the 
word rent to payments for the use of buildings, machinery, 
fixtures, etc., as well as to payments for the use of land or 
other natural capabilities; and in speaking of the rent of a 
house or the rent of afarm, we do not separate the price for 
the use of the improvements from the price for the use of 
the bare land. But in the economic meaning of rent, pay- 
ments for the use of any of the products of human exertion 
are excluded, and of the lumped payments for the use of 
houses, farms, etc., only that part is rent which constitutes 
the consideration for the use of the land—that part paid for 
the use of buildings or other improvements being properly 
interest, as it is a consideration for the use of capital. 

It is wider in this: In common speech we only speak of 
rent when owner and user are distinct persons. Butin the 
economic sense there is also rent where the same person is 
both owner and user. Where owner and user are thus the 
same person, whatever part of his income he might obtain 
by letting the land to another is rent, while the return for 
his labor and capital are that part of his income which they 
would yield him did he hire instead of owning the land. 
Rent is also expressed ina selling price. When land is pur- 
chased, the payment which is made for the ownership, or 


Chap. IT, RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT, 149 


right to perpetual use, is rent commuted or capitalized. If 
I buy land for a small price and hold it until I can sell it 
for a large price, I have become rich, not by wages for my 
labor or by interest upon my capital, but by the increase of 
rent. Rent, in short, is the share in the wealth produced | 
whicn the exclusive right to the use of natural capabilities 
gives to the owner. Wherever land has an exchange value 
there is rent in the economic meaning of the term. Wherever 
land having a value is used, either by owner or hirer, there 
is rent actual ; wherever it is not used, but still has a value, 
there is rent potential. It is this capacity of yielding rent 
which gives value to land. Until its ownership will confer 
some advantage, land has no value.* 

Thus rent or land value does not arise from the produc- 
tiveness or utility of land. It in no wise represents any 
help or advantage given to production, but simply the 
power of securing a part of the results of production, No 
matter what are its capabilities, land can yield no rent and 
have no value until some one is willing to give labor or the 
results of labor for the privilege of using it; and what any 
one will thus give, depends not upon the capacity of the 
land, but upon its capacity as compared with that of land 
that can be had for nothing. I may have very rich land, 
but it will yield no rent and have no value so long as there 
is other land as good to be had without cost. But when 
this other land is appropriated, and the best land to be had 
for nothing is inferior, either in fertility, situation, or other 
quality, my land will begin to have a value and yield rent. 
And though the productiveness of my land may decrease, 
yetif the productiveness of the land to be had without charge 
decreases in greater proportion, the rent I can get, and con- 
sequently the value of my land, will steadily increase. 
Rent, in short, is the price of monopoly, arising from the 
reduction to individual ownership of natural elements 
which human exertion can neither produce nor increase. 


* In speaking of the value of land I use and shall use the words as referring to 
the value of the bare land. When I wish to speak of the value of land and inr 
provements I shall use those words. 


bi 


150 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 


If one man owned all the land accessible to any com- 
munity, he could, of course, demand any price or condition 
for its use that he saw fit; and, as long as his ownership 
was acknowledged, the other members of the community 
would have but death or emigration as the alternative to 
submission to his terms. This has been the case in many 
communities; but in the modern form of society, the land, 
though generally reduced to individual ownership, is in the 
hands of too many different persons to permit the price 
which can be obtained for its use to be fixed by mere ca- 
price or desire, While each individual owner tries to get 
all he can, there is a hmit to what he can get, which con- 
stitutes the market price or market rent of the land, and 
which varies with different lands and at different times. 
The law, or relation, which, under these circumstances of 
free competition among all parties (the condition which in 
tracing out the principles of political economy is always to 
be assumed), determines what rent or price can be got by 
the owner, is styled the law of rent. This fixed with cer- 
tainty, we have more than a starting point from which the 
laws which regulate wages and interest may be traced. 
For, as the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertain- 
ing what fixes the share of the produce which goes as rent, 
we also ascertain what fixes the share which is left for 
wages, where there is no co-operation of capital; and what 
fixes the joint share left for wages and interest, where cap- 
ital does co-operate in production. 

Fortunately, as to the law of rent there is no necessity for 
discussion. Authority here coincides with common sense,* 
and.the accepted dictum of the current political economy 
has the self-evident character of a geometric axiom. This 
accepted law of rent, which John Stuart Mill denominates 


* T do not mean to say that the accepted law of rent has never been disputed. In 
all the nonsense that in the present disjointed condition of the science has been 
printed as political economy, it would be hard to find anything that has not been 
disputed. But 1 mean toesay that it has the sanction of all economic writers who 
are really to be regarded as authority. As John Stuart Mill says (Book II, Chap. 
XVI), ‘‘ there are few persons who have refused their assent to it, except from not 
having thoroughly understood it. The loose and inaccurate way in which it is often 
apprehended by those who affect to refute it is very remarkable.” An observation 
which has received many later exemplifications., 


Chap. 11. RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 15] 


the pons asinorum of political economy, is sometimes styled 
‘* Ricardo’s law of rent,” from the fact that, although not the 
first to announce it, he first brought it prominently into — 
notice.* It is: Mee 

The rent of land is determined by the excess of its produce 
over that which the same application can secure from the least 
productive land in use. 

This law, which of course applies to land used for other 
purposes than agriculture, and to all natural agencies, such 
as mines, fisheries, etc., has been exhaustively explained 
and illustrated by all the leading economists since Ricardo; 
but its mere statement has all the force of a self-evident 
proposition, for it is clear that the effect of competition is 
to make the lowest reward for which labor and capital will 
engage in production, the highest they can claim; and hence 
to enable the owner of more productive land to appropriate 
in rent all the return above that required to recompense 
labor and capital at the ordinary rate—that is to say, what 
they can obtain upon the least productive land in use (or at 
the least productive point), where, of course, no rent is 

paid. 
* Perhaps it may conduce to a fuller understanding of the 
law of rent to put it in this form: The ownership of a 
natural agent of production will give the power of appro- 
priating so much of the wealth produced by the exertion 
of labor and capital upon itas exceeds the return which the 
same application of labor and capital could secure in the 
least productive occupation in which they freely engage. 

This, however, amounts to precisely the same thing, for 
there is no occupation in which labor and capital can 
engage which does not require the use of land; and, furth- 
ermore, the cultivation or other use of land will always 
be carried to as low a point of remuneration, all things 
considered, as is freely accepted in any other pursuit. Sup- 
pose, for instance, a community in which part of the labor 


* According to McCulloch the law of rent was first stated in a pamphlet by Dr. 
James Anderson of Edinburgh in 1777, and simultaneously in the beginning of this 
century by Sir Edward West, Mr. Malthus, and Mr. Ricardo. 


152 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 117i. 


and capital is devoted to agriculture and part to manu- 
factures. The poorest land cultivated yields an average 
return which we will call 20, and 20 therefore will be the 
average return to labor and capital, as well in manufac- 
tures as in agriculture. Suppose that from some permanent 
cause the return in manufactures is now reduced to 15. 
Clearly, the labor and capital engaged in manufactures will 
turn to agriculture; and the process will not stop until, 
either by the extension of cultivation to inferior lands or 
to inferior points on the same land, or by an increase in 
the relative value of manufactured products, owing to the 
diminution of production—or, as a matter of fact, by both 
processes—the yield to labor and capital in both pursuits 
has, all things considered, been brought again to the same 
level, so that whatever be the final point of productiveness 
at which manufactures are still carried on, whether it be 
18 or 17 or 16, cultivation will also be extended to 
that point. And, thus, to say that rent will be the excess 
in productiveness over the yield at the margin, or lowest 
point, of cultivation, is the same thing as to say that it will 
be the excess of produce over what the same amount of 
labor and capital obtains in the least remunerative occupa- 
tion. 

The law of rent, is in fact, but a deduction from the law 
of competition, and amounts simply to the assertion that 
as wages and interest tend to a common level, all that part 
of the géneral production of wealth which exceeds what 
the labor and capital employed could have secured for 
themselves, if applied to the poorest natural agent in use, 
will go to land owners in the shape of rent. It rests, in the 
last analysis, upon the fundamental principle, which is to 
political economy what the attraction of gravitation is to 
physics—that men will seek to gratify their desires with 
the least exertion. 

This, then, is the law of rent. Although many standard 
treatises follow too much the example of Ricardo, who seems 
to view it merely in its relation to agriculture, and in several 
places speaks of manufactures yielding no rent (when, in - 


ig 


Chap. 11. RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT. 153 


truth, manufactures and exchange yield the highest rents, 
as is evinced by the greater value of land in manufacturing 
and commercial cities), thus hiding the full importance of 
the law, yet, ever since the time of Ricardo, the law itself 
has been clearly apprehended and fully recognized. But 
not so its corollaries. Plain as they are, the accepted doc- 
trine of wages (backed and fortified not only as has been 
hitherto explained, but by considerations whose enormous 
weight will be seen when the logical conclusion toward 
which we are tending is reached) has hitherto prevented 
their recognition.* Yet, is it not as plain as the simplest 
geometrical demonstration, that the corollary of the law of 
rent is the law of wages, where the division of the produce 
is simply between rent and wages; or the law of wages and 
interest taken together, where the division is into rent, 
wages, and interest? Stated reversely, the law of rent is 
necessarily the law of wages and interest taken together, 
for it is the assertion, that no matter what be the produc- 
tion which results from the application of labor and capital, 
these two factors will only receive in wages and interest 
such part of the produce as they could have produced on 
land free to them without the payment of rent—that is, the 
least productive land or point in use. For, if, of the prod- 
uce, all over the amount which labor and capital could 
secure from land for which no rent is paid must go to land 
owners as rent; then all that can be claimed by labor and 
capital as wages and interest is the amount which they 
_ could have secured from land yielding no rent. 

Or to put it in algebraic form: 

As Produce = Rent + Wages-+ Interest, 

Therefore, Produce — Rent = Wages + Interest. 

Thus wages and interest do not depend upon the produce 
of labor and capital, but upon what is left after rent is 
taken out; or, upon the produce which they could obtain 
without paying rent—that is, from the poorest land in use. 
And hence, no matter what be the increase in productive 


* Buckle (Chap. II, History of Civilization) recognizes the necoeeey relation be- 
tween rent, interest, "and wages, but evidently never worked it out, 


154 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION, Book 111 


power, if the increase in rent keeps pace with it, neither 
wages nor interest can increase. 

The moment this simple relation is recognized, a flood of 
light streams in upon what was before inexplicable, and 
seemingly discordant facts range themselves under an 
obvious law. The increase of rent which goes on in pro- 
gressive countries is at once seen to be the key which 
explains why wages and interest fail to increase with in- 
crease of productive power. For the wealth produced in 
every community is divided into two paris by what may be 
called the rent line, which is fixed by the margin of culti- 
vation, or the return which labor and capital could obtain 
from such natural opportunities as are free to them without 
the payment of rent. From the part of the produce below 
this line wages and interest must be paid. All that is above 
goes to the owners of land. Thus, where the value of land 
is low, there may be a small production of wealth, and yet 
a high rate of wages and interest, as we see in new coun- 
tries. And, where the value of land is high, there may be 
a very large production of wealth, and yet a low rate of 
wages and interest, as we seein old countries. And, where 
productive power increases, as it is increasing in all pro- 
gressive countries, wages and interest will be affected, not 
by the increase, but by the manner in which rent is affected. 
If the value of land increases proportionately, all the 
increased production will be swallowed up by rent, and 
wages and interest will remain as before. If the value of 
land increases in greater ratio than productive power, rent 
will swallow up even more than the increase; and while the 
produce of labor and capital will be much larger, wages 
and interest will fall. It is only when the value of land 
fails to increase as rapidly as productive power, that wages 
and interest can increase with the increase of productive 
power. All this is exemplified in actual fact. 


OF APT TRL LE, 
OF INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST, 


Having made sure of the law of rent, we have obtained 
ns its necessary corollary the law of wages, where the divi- 
sion is between rent and wages; and the law of wages and 
interest taken together, where the division is between the 
three factors. What proportion of the produce is taken as 
rent must determine what proportion is left for wages, 
if but land and labor are concerned; or to be divided 
between wages and interest, if capital joins in the produc- 
tion. 

But without reference to this deduction, let us seek each 
of these laws separately and independently. If, when ob- 
tained in this way, we find that they correlate, our conclu- 
sions will have the highest certainty. 

And, inasmuch as the discovery of the law of wages is 
the ultimate purpose of our inquiry, let us take up first the 
subject of interest. 

I have already referred to the difference in meaning 
between the terms profits and interest. It may be worth 
while, further, to say that interest, as an abstract term in 
the distribution of wealth, differs in meaning from the 
word as commonly used, in this: That it includes all 
returns for the use of capital, and not merely those that 
pass from borrower to lender; and that it excludes com- 
pensation for risk, which forms so great a part of what is 
commonly called interest. Compensation for risk is evi- 
dently only an equalization of return between different 
employments of capital. What we want to find is, what 
fixes the general rate of interest proper? The different 
rates of compensation for risk added to this will give the 
current rates of commercial interest. R 


L56 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book Ill 


Now, it is evident that the greatest differences in what 
is ordinarily called interest are due to differerices in risk; 
but it is also evident that between different countries and 
different times there are also considerable variations in the 
rate of interest proper. In California at one time two per 
cent. a month would not have been considered extrava- 
gant interest on security on which loans could now be 
effected at seven or eight per cent. per annum, and though 
some part of the difference may be due to an increased 
sense of general stability, the greater part is evidently due 
to some other general cause. In the United States gen- 
erally, the rate of interest has been higher than in 
England; and in the newer States of the Union higher 
than in the older States; and the tendency of interest to 
sink as society progresses is well marked and has long 
been noticed. What is the law which will bind all these 
variations together and exhibit their cause ? 

It is not worth while to dwell more than has hitherto in- 
cidentally been done upon the failure of the current political 
economy to determine the true law of interest. Its specu- 
lations upon this subject have not the definiteness and 
coherency which have enabled the accepted doctrine of 
wages to withstand the evidence of fact, and do not require 
the same elaborate review. That they run counter to the 
facts is evident. That interest does not depend on the 
productiveness of labor and capital is proved by the gen- 
eral fact that where labor and capital are most productive 
interest is lowest. That it does not depend reversely upon 
wages (or the cost of labor), lowering as wages rise, and 
increasing as wages fall, is proved by the general fact that 
interest is high when and where wages are high, and low 
when and where wages are low. 

Let us begin at the beginning. The nature and func- 
tions of capital have already been sufficiently shown, but 
even at the risk of something like a digression, let us en- 
deavor to ascertain the cause of interest before considering 
itslaw. For in addition to aiding our inquiry by giving us 
a firmer and clearer grasp of the subject now in hand, it 


Chap. 111, | INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 157 
may lead to conclusions whose practical importance will be 
hereafter apparent. 

What is the reason and justification of interest? Why 
should the borrower pay back to the lender more than he 
received? These questions are worth answering, not merely 
from their speculative, but from their practical importance. 
The feeling that interest is the robbery of industry is wide- 
spread and growing, and on both sides of the Atlantic shows 
itself more and more in popular literature and in popular 
movements. The expounders of the current political econ- 
omy say that there is no conflict between labor and capital, 
and oppose as injurious to labor, as well as to capital, all 
schemes for restricting the reward which capital obtains; 
yet in the same works the doctrine is laid down that wages 
and interest bear to each other an inverse relation, and 
that interest will be low or high as wages are high or low.* 
Clearly, then, if this doctrine is correct, the only objection 
that from the stand-point of the laborer can be logically 
made to any scheme for the reduction of interest is that it 
will not work, which is manifestly very weak ground while 
ideas of the omnipotence of legislatures are yet so wide- 
spread; and though such an objection may lead to the 
abandonment of any one particular scheme, it will not pre- 
vent the search for another. 

Why should interest be? Interest, we are told, in all the 
standard works, is the reward of abstinence. But, mani- 
festly, this does not sufficiently account for it. Abstinence is 
not an active, but a passive quality; it is not a doing—it is 
simply a not doing. Abstinence in itself produces nothing. 
Why, then, should any part of what is produced be claimed 
for it? If I have a sum of money which I lock up fora 
year, I have exercised as much abstinence as though I 
had loaned it. Yet, though in the latter case I will expect 
it to be returned to me with an additional sum by way of 
interest, in the former I will have but the same sum, and 
no increase. But the abstinence is the same. If it be 


* This is really said of profits, but with the evident meaning of returns to capital 


158 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Boot 111. 


said that in lending it I do the borrower a service, it may 
be replied that he also does me a service in keeping it 
safely—a service that under some conditions may be very 
valuable, and for which I would willingly pay, rather than 
not have it; and a service which, as to some forms of capi- 
tal, may be even more obvious than as to money. For 
there are many forms of capital which will not keep, but 
must be constantly renewed; and many which are onerous 
to maintain if one has no immediate use for them. So, if 
the accumulator of capital helps the user of capital by 
loaning it to him, does not the user discharge the debt in 
full when he hands it back? Is not the secure preservation, 
the maintenance, the re-creation of capital, a complete 
offset to the use? Accumulation is the end and aim of 
abstinence. Abstinence can go no further and accomplish 
no more; nor of itself can it even do this. If we were 
merely to abstain from using it, how much wealth would 
disappear in a year! And how little would be left at the 
end of two years! Hence, if more is demanded for absti- 
nence than the safe return of capital, is not labor wronged ? 
Such ideas as these underlie the wide-spread opinion that 
interest can only accrue at the expense of labor, and is in 
fact a robbery of labor which in a social condition based 
on justice would be abolished. 

The attempts to refute these views do not appear to me 
always successful. For instance, as it illustrates the usual 
reasoning, take Bastiat’s oft-quoted illustration of the 
plane. One carpenter, James, at the expense of ten days 
labor, makes himself a plane, which will last in use for 290 
of the 300 working days of the year. William, another 
carpenter, proposes to borrow the plane for a year, offering 
to give back at the end of that time, when the plane will 
be worn out, a new plane equally as good. James objects 
to lending the plane on these terms, urging that if he 
merely gets back a plane he will have nothing tu com- 
pensate him for the loss of the advantage which the 
use of the plane during the year would give him. 
William, admitting this, agrees not merely to return 


Chap. III. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 159 


a plane, but, in addition, to give James a new plank. 
The agreement is carried out to mutual satisfaction. 
The plane is used up during the year, but at the end 
of the year, James receives as good a one, and a plank 
in addition, He lends the new plane again and again, 
until finally it passes into the hands of his son, ‘‘ who still 
continues to lend it,” receiving a plank each time. This 
plank, which represents interest, is said to be a natural 
and equitable remuneration, as by giving it in return for 
the use of the plane, William ‘“‘ obtains the power which 
exists in the tool to increase the productiveness of labor,” 
and is no worse off than he would have been had he not 
borrowed the plane; while James obtains no more than he 
would have had if he had retained and used the plane in- 
stead of lending it. 

Is this really so? It will be observed that it is not 
affirmed that James could make the plane and William 
could not, for that would be to make the plank the reward 
of superior skill. It is only that James had abstained 
from consuming the result of his labor until he had accu- 
mulated it in the form of a plane—which is the essential 
idea of capital. 

Now, if James had not lent the plane he could have used 
it for 290 days, when it would have been worn out, and he 
would have been obliged to take the remaining ten days of 
the working year to make a new plane. If William had 
not borrowed the plane he would have taken ten days to 
make himself a plane, which he could have used for the 
remaining 290 days. Thus, if we take a plank to represent 
the fruits of a day’s labor with the aid of a plane, at the . 
end of the year, had no borrowing taken place, each would 
have stood with reference to the plane as he commenced, 
James with a plane, and William with none, and each 
would have had as the result of the year’s work 290 planks. 
If the condition of the borrowing had been what William 
first proposed, the return of a new plane, the same relative 
situation would have been secured. William would have 
worked for 290 days, and taken the last ten days to make 


160 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IIL 


the new plane to return to James. James would have taken 
the first ten days of the year to make another plane which 
would have lasted for 290 days, when he would have received 
a new plane from William. Thus, the simple return of the 
plane would have put each in the same position at the end 
of the year as if no borrowing had taken place. James 
would have lost nothing to the gain of William, and Wil- 
liam would have gained nothing to the loss of James. 
Each would have had the return his labor would otherwise 
have yielded—yiz., 290 planks, and James would have had 
the advantage with which he started, a new plane. 

But when, in addition to the return of a plane, a plank is 
given, James at the end of the year will be in a better posi- 
tion than if there had been no borrowing, and William in a 
worse. James will have 291 planks and a new plane, and 
William 289 planks and no plane. And if William keeps 
on borrowing of James on the same terms, is it not evident 
that the income of the one will progressively decline, and 
that of the other will progressively increase, until the time 
will come when, as the result of the original lending of a 
plane, James will obtain the whole result of William’s 
labor—that is to say, William will become virtually his 
slave ? 

Is interest, then, natural and equitable? ‘There is noth- 
ing in this illustration to show it to be. Evidently what 
Bastiat (and many others) assigns as the basis of interest, 
**the power which exists in the tool to increase the pro- 
ductiveness of labor,” is neither in justice nor in fact the 
basis of interest. The fallacy which makes Bastiat’s illus- 
tration pass as conclusive with those who do not stop to 
analyze it, as we have done, is that with the loan of the 
plane they associate the transfer of the increased productive 
power which a plane gives to labor. But this is really not 
involved, The essential thing which James loaned to 
William was not the increased power which labor acquires 
from using planes. To suppose this, we should have to 
suppose that the making and using of planes was a trade 
secret or a patent right, when the illustration would become 


Chap. ILI. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 161 


one of monopoly, not of capital. The essential thing which 
James loaned to William was not the privilege of applying 
his labor in a more effective way, but the use of the con- 
crete result of ten days labor. If ‘‘the power which ex- 
ists in tools to increase the productiveness of labor” were 
the cause of interest, then the rate of interest would in- 
crease with the march of invention. This is not so; nor 
yet will I be expected to pay more interest if I borrow a 
fifty dollar sewing machine than if I borrow fifty dollars 
worth of needles, if I borrow a steam engine than if I 
borrow a pile of bricks of equal value. Capital, like wealth, 
is interchangeable. It is not one thing; it is anything to 
that value within the circle of exchange. Nor yet does 
the improvement of tools add to the reproductive power of 
capital; it adds to the productive power of labor. 

And I am inclined to think that if all wealth consisted 
of such things as planes, and all production was such as 
that of carpenters—that is to say, if wealth consisted but 
of the inert matter of the universe, and production of 
working up this inert matter into different shapes, that in- 
terest would be but the robbery of industry, and could not 
long exist. This is not to say that there would be no ac- 
cumulation, for though the hope of increase is a motive for 
turning wealth into capital, it is not the motive, or at least, 
not the main motive, for accumulating. Children will save 
their pennies for Christmas; pirates will add to their buried 
treasure; Eastern princes will accumulate hoards of coin; 
.and men like Stewart or Vanderbilt, having become once 
possessed of the passion of accumulating, would continue 
as long as they could to add to their millions, even though 
accumulation brought no increase. Nor yet is it to say 
that there would be no borrowing or lending, for this, to 
a large extent, would be prompted by mutual convenience. 
If William had a job of work to be immediately begun and 
James one that would not commence until ten days there- 
after, there might be a mutual advantage in the loan of the 
plane, though no plank should be given. 


But all wealth is not of the nature of planes, or planks, 
8 


162 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book ILI. 


or money, nor is all production merely the turning into 
other forms of the inert matter of the universe. It is 
true that if I put away money, it will not increase. 
But suppose, instead, I put away wine. At the end of a 
year I will have an increased value, for the wine will have 
improved in quality. Or supposing that in a country adapt- 
ed to them, I set out bees; at the end of a year I will 
have more swarms of bees, and the honey which they have 
made. Or, supposing, where there is a range, I turn’ out 
sheep, or hogs, or cattle; at the end of the year I will, 
upon the average, also have an increase. 

Now what gives the increase in these cases is something 
which, though it generally requires labor to utilize it, is yet 
distinct and separable from labor—the active power of 
nature; the principle of growth, of reproduction, which 
everywhere characterizes all the forms of that mysterious 
thing or condition which we call life. And it seems to me 
that it is this which is the cause of interest, or the increase 
of capital over and above that due to labor. There are, 
so to speak, in the movements which make up the ever- 
lasting flux of nature, certain vital currents, which will, if 
we use them, aid us, with a force independent of our own 
efforts, in turning matter into the forms we desire—that is 
to say, into wealth. 

While many things might be mentioned which, like 
money, or planes, or planks, or engines, or clothing, have 
no innate power of increase, yet other things are included 
in the terms wealth and capital which, like wine, will of 
themselves increase in quality up to a certain poivt; or, 
like bees or cattle, will of themselves increase in quantity; 
and certain other things, such as seeds, which, though the 
conditions which enable them to increase may not be main- 
tained without labor, yet will, when these conditions are 
maintained, yield an increase, or give a return over and 
above that which is to be attributed to labor. 

Now the interchangeability of wealth necessarily involves 
an average between all the species of wealth of any special 
advantage which accrues from the possession of any par- 


Chap. 111. | INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 163 


ticular species, for no one would keep capital in one form 
when it could be changed into a more advantageous form. 
No one, for instance, would grind wheat into flour and keep 
it on hand for the convenience of those who desire from 
time to time to exchange wheat or its equivalent for flour, 
unless he could by such exchange secure an increase equal 
to that which, all things considered, he could secure by 
planting his wheat. No one, if he could keep them, would 
exchange a flock of sheep now for their net weight in mut- 
ton to be returned next year; for by keeping the sheep he 
would not only have the same amount of mutton next year, 
but also the lambs and the fleeces. No one would dig an 
irrigating ditch, unless those who by its aid are enabled to 
utilize the reproductive forces of nature would give him 
such a portion of the increase they receive as to make his 
capital yield him as much as theirs. And so, in any circle 
of exchange, the power of increase which the reproductive 
or vital force of nature gives to some species of capital 
must average with all; and he who lends or uses in exchange, 
money, or planes, or bricks, or clothing, is not deprived of 
the power to obtain an increase, any more than if he had 
lent or put to a reproductive use so much capital in a form 
capable of increase. 

There is also in the utilization of the variations in the 
powers of nature and of man which is effected by ex- 
change, an increase which somewhat resembles that 
produced by the vital forces of nature. In one place, for 
instance, a given amount of labor will secure 200 in vege- 
table food or 100 in animal food. In another place, these 
conditions are reversed, and the same amount of labor will 
produce 100 in vegetable food or 200 in animal. In the 
one place, the relative value of vegetable to animal food 
will be as two to one, and in the other as one to two; and, 
supposing equal amounts of each to be required, the same 
amount of labor will in either place secure 150 of both. 
But by devoting labor in the one place to the procurement 
of vegetable food, and in the other to the procurement of 
animal food, and exchanging to the quantity required, the 


164 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION Book 111. 


people of each place will be enabled by the given amount 
of labor to procure 200 of both, less the losses and expenses 
of exchange; so that in each place the produce which is 
taken from use and devoted to exchange brings back an in- 
crease. Thus Whittington’s cat, sent to a far country where 
cats are scarce and rats are plenty, returns in bales of 
goods and bags of gold. 

Of course, labor is necessary to exchange, as it is to the 
utilization of the-reproductive forces of nature, and the 
produce of exchange, as the produce of agriculture, is 
clearly the produce of labor; but yet, in the one case as in 
the other, there is a distinguishable force co-operating with 
that of labor, which makes it impossible to measure the re- 
sult solely by the amount of labor expended, but renders 
the amount of capital and the time it is in use integral 
parts in the sum of forces. Capital aids labor in all of the 
different modes of production, but there is a distinction 
between the relations of the two in such modes of produc- 
tion as consist merely of changing the form or place of 
matter, as planing boards or mining coal; and such modes 
of production as avail themselves of the reproductive forces 
of nature, or of the power of increase arising from differ- 
ences in the distribution of natural and human powers, 
such as the raising of grain or the exchange of ice for sugar. 
In production of the first kind, labor alone is the efficient 
cause; when labor stops, production stops. When the 
carpenter drops his plane as the sun sets, the increase of 
value, which he with his plane is producing, ceases 
until he begins his labor again the following morning. 
When the factory bell rings for closing, when the mine 
is shut down, production ends until work is resumed. 
The intervening time, so far as regards production, might as 
well be blotted out. The lapse of days, the change of 
seasons, is no element in the production that depends 
solely upon the amount of labor expended. But in the 
other modes of production to which I have referred, and in 
which the part of labor may be likened to the operations 
of lumbermen who throw their loves into the stream, leay- 


Chap. 111. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 165 


ing it to the current to carry them to the boom of the saw 
mill many miles below, time is an element. The seed in 
the ground germinates and grows while the farmer sleeps 
or plows new fields, and the ever-flowing currents of air 
and ocean bear Whittington’s cat towards the rat-tormented 
ruler in the regions of romance. 

To recur now to Bastiat’s illustration. It is evident that — 
if there is any reason why William at the end of the year 
should return to James more than an equally good plane, 
it does not spring’, as Bastiat has it, from the increased 
power which the tool gives to labor, for that, as I have 
shown, is not an element; but it springs from the element 
of time—the difference of a year between the lending 
and return of the plane. Now, if the view is confined to 
the illustration, there is nothing to suggest how this 
element should operate, for a plane at the end of the year 
has no greater value than a plane at the beginning. Butif 
we substitute for the plane a calf, it is clearly to be seen 
that to put James in as good a position as if he had not 
lent, William at the end of the year must return, not a 
calf, but a cow. Or, if we suppose that the ten days’ labor 
had been devoted to planting corn, it is evident that James 
would not have been fully recompensed if at the end of the 
year he had received simply so much planted corn, for dur- 
ing the year the planted corn would have germinated and 
grown and multiplied; and so if the plane had been devoted 
to exchange, it might during the year have been turned over 
several times, each exchange yielding an increase to James. 
Now, therefore, as James’ labor might have been applied 
in any of those ways—or what amounts to the same thing, 
~some of the labor devoted to making planes might be thus 
_transferred—he will not make a plane for William to use for 
the year unless he gets back more than a plane. And 
William can afford to give back more than a plane, because 
the same general average of the advantages of labor ap- 
plied in different modes will enable him to obtain from his 
labor an advantage from the element of time. It is this 
general averaging, or aS we may say, ‘‘ pooling” of ad- 


166 HE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Rook 14S. 


vantages, which necessarily takes place where the exigen- 
cies of society require the simultaneous carrying on of the 
different modes of production, which gives to the posses- 
sion of wealth incapable in itself of increase an advantage 
similar to that which attaches to wealth used in such a way 
as to gain from the element of time. And, in the last 
analysis, the advantage which is given by the lapse of time 
springs from the generative force of nature and the varying 
powers of nature and of man. 

Were the quality and capacity of matter everywhere uni- 
form, and all productive power in man, there would be 
no riveree The advantage of superior tools might at 
times be transferred on terms resembling the payment of 
interest, but such transactions would be irregular and 
intermittent—the exception not the rule. For the power 
of obtaining such returns would not, as now, inhere in 
the possession of capital, and the advantage of time would 
only operate in peculiar circumstances. That I, having a 
thousand dollars, can certainly let it out at interest, does 
not arise from the fact that there are others, not having a 
thousand dollars, who will gladly pay me for the use of 
it, if they can get it no other way; but from the fact that 
the capital which my thousand dollars represents has the 
power of yielding an increase to whoever has it, even 
though he be a millionaire. For the price which anything 
will bring does not depend upon what the buyer would be 
willing to give rather than go without it, so much as upon 
what the seller can otherwise get. For instance, a manu- 
facturer who wishes to retire from business has machinery 
to the value of $100,000. If he cannot, should he sell, 
take this $100,000 and invest it so that it will yield him in- 
terest, it will be immaterial to him, risk being eliminated; 
whether he obtains the whole price at once or in install- 
ments, and if the purchaser has the requisite capital, which 
we must suppose in order that the transaction may rest on 
its own merits, it will be immaterial whether he pay at 
once or after a time. If the purchaser has not the required 
capital, it may be to his convenience that payments should 


Chap. I1T. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 167 


be delayed, but it would be only in exceptional circum- 
stances that the seller would ask, or the buyer would 
consent, to pay any premium on this account; nor in such 
cases would this premium be properly interest For inter- 
est is not properly a payment made for the use of. capital, 
but a return accruing from the increase of capital. Ifthe 
capital did not yield an increase, the cases would be few 
and exceptional in which the owner would get a premium, 
William would soon find out if it did not pay him to give 
a plank for the privilege of deferring payment on James’ 
plane. 

In short, when we come to analyze production we find if 
to fall into three modes—viz: 

Apaptina, or changing natural products either in form or 
in place so as to fit them for the satisfaction of human de- 
sire. 

Growine, or utilizing the vital forces of nature, as by . 
raising vegetables or animals. | 

Excuanainea, or utilizing, so as to add to the general sum 
of wealth, the higher powers of those natural forces which 
vary with locality, or of those human forces which vary 
with situation, occupation, or character. 

In each of these three modes of production capital may 
aid labor—or, to speak more precisely, in the first mode 
capital may aid labor, but is not absolutely necessary; in 
the others capital must aid labor, or is necessary. 

Now, while by adapting capital in proper forms we 
may increase the effective power of labor to impress upon 
matter the character of wealth, as when we adapt wood and 
iron to the form and use of a plane; or iron, coal, water, 
and oil to the form and use of a steam engine; or stone, 
clay, timber, and iron to that of a building, yet the charac- 
teristic of this use of capital is, that the benefit is in the 
use. When, however, we employ capital in the second of 
these modes, as when we plant grain in the ground, or 
place animals on a stock farm, or put away wine to im- 
prove with age, the benefit arises, not from the use, but 
from the increase. And so, when we employ capital in the 


168 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book f11 


third of these modes, and instead of using a thing we ex- 
change it, the benefit is in the increase or greater value of 
the things received in return. 

Primarily, the benefits which arise from use go to labor, 
and the benefits which arise from increase, to capital. But, 
inasmuch as the division of labor and the interchangeabil- 
ity of wealth necessitate and imply an averaging of ben- 
efits, in so far as these different modes of production cor- 
relate with each other, the benefits that arise from one will 
average with the benefits that arise from the others, for 
neither labor nor capital will be devoted to any mode of 

“production while any other mode which is open to them 
will yield a greater return. That is to say, labor expended 
in the first mode of production will get, not the whole re. 
turn, but the return minus such part as is necessary to give 
to capital such an increase as it could have secured in the 
other modes of production, and capital engaged in the sec- 
ond and third modes will obtain, not the whole increase, 
but the increase minus what is sufficient to give to labor 
such reward as it could have secured if expended in the 
first mode. 

Thus interest springs from the power of increase which 
the reproductive forces of nature, and the in effect analo. 
gous capacity for exchange, give to capital. It is not an 
arbitrary, but a natural thing; it is not the result of a par- 
ticular social organization, but of laws of the universe 
which underlie society. Itis, therefore, just. 

They who talk about abolishing interest fall into an error 
similar to that previously pointed out as giving its plausi- 
bility to the doctrine that wages are drawn from capital. 
When they thus think of interest, they think only of that 
which is paid by the user of capital to the owner of capital. 
But, manifestly, this is not all interest, but only some in- 
terest. Whoever uses capital and obtains the increase it is 
capable of giving receives interest. If I plant and 
care for a tree until it comes to maturity, 1 receive, 
in its fruit, interest upon the capital I have thus ac- 
cumulated—that is, the labor I have expended, If I 


Chap. I11. INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST. 169 


raise a cow, the milk which she yields me, morning 
and evening, is not merely the reward of the labor then 
exerted; but interest upon the capital which my labor, 
expended in raising her, has accumulated in the cow. And 
so, if I use my own capital in directly aiding production, 
as by machinery, or in indirectly aiding production, in ex- 
change, I receive a special and distinguishable advantage 
from the reproductive character of capital, which is as real, 
though perhaps not as clear, as though I had lent my cap- 
ital to another and he had paid me interest. 


CHAPTER IV. 


OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFYEN MISTAKEN FOR 
INTEREST. 


The belief that interest is the robbery of industry is, I 
am persuaded, in large part due to a failure to discriminate 
between what is really capital and what is not, and between 
profits which are properly interest and profits which arise 
from other sources than the use of capital. In the speech 
and literature of the day every one is styled a capitalist who 
possesses what, independent of his labor, will yield him a 
return, while whatever is thus received is spoken of as the 
earnings or takings of capital, and we everywhere hear of 
the conflict of labor and capital. Whether there is, in 
reality, any conflict between labor and capital, I do not 
yet ask the reader to make up his mind; but it will be well 
here to clear away some misapprehensions which confuse 
the judgment. 

Attention has already been called to the fact that land 
values, which constitute such an enormous part of what is 
commonly called capital, are not capital at all; and that 
rent, which is as commonly included in the receipts of cap- 
ital, and which takes an ever increasing portion of the 
produce of an advancing community, is not the earnings 
of capital, and must be carefully separated from interest. 
It is not necessary now to dwell further upon this point. 
Attention has likewise been called to the fact that the 
stocks, bonds, etc., which constitute another great part of 
what is commonly called capital, are not capital at all; but, 
in some of their shapes, these evidences of indebtedness so 
closely resemble capital, and in some cases actually per- 
form, or seem to perform, the functions of capital, while 


Shap IV. OF SPURIOUS OAPITAL AND INTEREST. 17] 


they yield a return to their owners which is not only spoken 
of as interest, but has every semblance of interest, that 
it is worth while, before attempting to clear the idea of 
interest from some other ambiguities that beset it, to speak 
again of these at greater length. 

Nothing can be capital, let it always be remembered, 
that is not wealth—that is to say, nothing can be capital 
that does not consist of actual, tangible things, not the 
spontaneous offerings of nature, which have in themselves, 
and not by proxy, the power of directly or indirectly min- 
istering to human desire. 

Thus, a government bond is not capital, nor yet is it the 
representative of capital. The capital that was once re- 
ceived for it by the government has been consumed unpro- 
ductively—blown away from the mouths of cannon, used 
up in war ships, expended in keeping men marching and 
drilling, killing and destroying. The bond cannot repre- 
sent capital that has been destroyed. It does not repre- 
sent capital at all. Itis simply a solemn declaration that 
the government will, some time or other, take by taxation 
from the then existing stock of the people, so much wealth, 
which it will turn over to the holder of the bond; and that, 
in the meanwhile, it will, from time to time, take, in the 
same way, enough to make up to the holder the increase 
which so much capital as it some day promises to give him 
would yield him were it actually in his possession. The 
immense sums which are thus taken from the produce of 
every modern country to pay interest on public debts are 
not the earnings or increase of capital—are not really in- 
terest in the strict sense of the term, but are taxes levied on 
the produce of labor and capital, leaving so much less for 
wages and so much less for real interest. 

But, supposing the bonds have been issued for the deep- 
ening of a river bed, the construction of lighthouses, or the 
erection of a public market; or supposing, to embody the 
same idea while changing the illustration, they have been 
issued by a railroad company. Here they do represent 
capital, existing and applied to productive uses, and like 


172 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 


stock in a dividend paying company may be considered as 
evidences of the ownership of capital. But they can only 
be so considered in so far as they actually represent capital, 
and not as they have been issued in excess of the capital 
used. Nearly all our railroad companies and other incor- 
porations are loaded down in this way. Where one 
dollar’s worth of capital has been really used, certificates 
for two, three, four, five, or even ten, have been issued, and 
upon this fictitious amount interest or dividends are paid 
with more or less regularity. Now, what, in excess of the 
amount due as interest to the real capital invested, is thus 
earned by these companies and thus paid out, as well as the 
large sums absorbed by managing rings and never account- 
ed for, is evidently not taken from the aggregate produce 
of the community on account of the services rendered 
by capital—it is not interest. If we are restricted to the 
terminology of economic writers who decompose profits 
into interest, insurance, and wages of superintendence, it 
must fall into the category of wages of superintendence. 

But while wages of superintendence clearly enough in- 
clude the income derived from such personal qualities as 
skill, tact, enterprise, organizing ability, inventive power, 
character, etc., to the profits we are speaking of there is 
another contributing element, which can only arbitrarily be 
classed with these—the element of monopoly. 

When James I granted to his minion the exclusive 
privilege of making gold and silver thread, and prohibited, 
under severe penalties, every one else from making such 
thread, the income which Buckingham enjoyed in conse- 
quence did not arise from the interest upon the capital 
invested in the manufacture, nor from the skill, etc., 
of those who really conducted the operations, but from 
what he got from the King—viz., the exclusive privilege— 
in reality the power to levy a tax for his own purposes upon 
all the users of such thread. J'rom a similar source come a 
large part of the profits which are commonly confounded 
with the earnings of capital. Receipts from the patents 
granted for a limited term of years for the purpose of 


Chap. IV. OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND INTEREST. LS 


encouraging invention are clearly attributable to this source, 
as are the returns derived from monopolies created by pro- 
tective tariffs under the pretense of encouraging home 
industry. But there is another far more insidious and far 
more general form of monopoly. In the aggregation of 
large masses of capital under a common control there is 
developed a new and essentially different power from that 
power of increase which is a general characteristic of capi- 
tal and which gives rise to interest. While the latter is, 
so to speak, constructive in its nature, the power which, as 
ageregation proceeds, rises upon it is destructive. It is a 
power of the same kind as that which James granted to 
Buckingham, and it is often exercised with as reckless a 
disregard, not only of the industrial, but of the personal 
rights of individuals. A railroad company approaches a 
small town as a highwayman approaches his victim. The 
threat, ‘‘If you do not accede to our terms we will leave 
your town two or three miles to one side!” is as efficacious 
as the ‘‘Stand and deliver,” when backed by a cocked 
pistol. For the threat: of the railroad company is not 
merely to deprive the town of the benefits which the rail- 
road might give; it is to put it in a far worse position than 
if no railroad had been built. Or if, where there is water 
communication, an opposition boat is put on; rates are re- 
duced until she is forced off, and then the public are com- 
pelled to pay the cost of the operation, just as the Rohil- 
las were obliged to pay the forty lacs with which Sujah 
Dowlah hired of Warren Hastings an English force to assist 
him in desolating their country and decimating their peo- 
ple. And just as robbers unite to plunder in concert and 
divide the spoil, so do the trunk lines of railroad unite to 
raise rates and pool their earnings, or the Pacific roads 
form a combination with the Pacific Mail Steamship Com- 
pany by which toll gates are virtually established on land 
and ocean. And just as Buckingham’s creatures, under au- 
thority of the gold thread patent, searched private houses, 
and seized papers and persons for purposes of lust and 
extortion, so does the great telegraph company which, by 


174 ; THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book I11. 


the power of associated capital deprives the people of the 
United States of the full benefits of a beneficent invention, 
tamper with correspondence and crush out newspapers 
which offend it. 

It is only necessary to allude to these things, not to 
dwell on them. Every one knows the tyranny and rapacity 
with which capital when concentrated in large amounts is 
frequently wielded to corrupt, to rob, and to destroy. 
What I wish to call the reader’s attention to is that profits 
thus derived are not to be confounded with the legitimate 
returns of capital as an agent of production. They are, 
for the most part, to be attributed to a maladjustment 
of forces in the legislative department of government, 
and to a blind adherence to ancient barbarisms and the 
superstitious reverence for the technicalities of a narrow 
profession in the administration of law; while the general 
cause which in advancing communities tends, with the 
concentration of wealth, to the concentration of power, is 
the solution of the great problem we are seeking for, but 
have not yet found. 

Any analysis will show that much of the profits which 
are, in common thought, confounded with interest are in re- 
ality due, not to the power of capital, but to the power of 
concentrated capital, or of concentrated capital acting upon 
bad social adjustments. And it will also show that what 
are clearly and properly wages of superintendence are very 
frequently confounded with the earnings of capital. 

And, so, profits properly due to the elements of risk are 
frequently confounded with interest. Some people acquire 
wealth by taking chances which to the majority of people 
must necessarily bring loss. Such are many forms of 
speculation, and especially that mode of gambling known 
as stock dealing. Nerve, judgment, the possession of capi- 
tal, skillin what in lower forms of gambling are known 
as the arts of the confidence man and blackleg, give ad- 
vantage to the individual; but, just as at a gaming table, 
whatever one gains some one else must lose. 

Now, taking the great fortunes that are so often referred 


Chap. 1V. OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND INTEREST. LT5 


to as exemplifying the accumulative power of capital—the 
Dukes of Westminster and Marquises of Bute, the Roths- 
childs, Astors, Stewarts, Vanderbilts, Goulds, Stanfords, 
and Floods—it is upon examination readily seen that they 
have been built up, in greater or less part, not by interest, 
but by elements such as we have been reviewing. 

How necessary it is to note the distinctions to which I 
have been calling attention is shown in current discussions, 
where the shield seems alternately white or black as the 
standpoint is shifted from one side to the other. On the 
one hand we are called upon to see, in the existence of deep 
poverty side by side with vast accumulations of wealth, the 
ageressions of capital on labor, and in reply it is pointed 
out that capital aids labor, and hence we are asked to con- 
clude that there is nothing unjust or unnatural in the wide 
gulf between rich and poor; that wealth is but the reward 
of industry. intelligence, and thrift; and poverty but the 
punishment of indolence, ignorance, and imprudence. 


OA Pe Ve 
THE LAW OF INTEREST. 


Let us turn now to the law of interest, keeping in mind 
two things to which attention has heretofore been called— 
Viz: 

First—That it is not capital which employs labor, but 
labor which employs capital. 

Second—That capital is not a fixed quantity, but can 
always be increased or decreased, (1) by the greater or less 
application of labor to the production of capital, and (2) 
by the conversion of wealth into capital, or capital into 
wealth, for capital being but wealth applied in a certain 
way, wealth is the larger and inclusive term. 

It is manifest that under conditions of freedom the maxi- 
mum that can be given for the use of capital will be the 
increase it will bring, and the minimum or zero will be the 
replacement of capital; for above the one point the bor- 
rowing of capital would involve a loss, and below the other, 
capital could not be maintained. 

Observe, again: It is not, as is carelessly stated by some 
writers, the increased efficiency given to labor by the adap- 
tation of capital to any special form or use which fixes this 
maximum, but the average power of increase which belongs 
to capital generally. The power of applying itself in ad- 
vantageous forms is a power of labor, which capital as cap- 
tal cannot claim nor share. <A bow and arrows will enable 
an Indian to kill, let us say, a buffalo every day, while with 
sticks and stones he could hardly kill one in a week; but 
the weapon maker of the tribe could not claim from the 
hunter six out of every seven buffaloes killed as a return for 
the use of a bow and arrows ; nor will capital invested ina 
woolen factory yield to the capitalist the difference between 


Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 177 


the produce of the factory and what the same amount of 
labor could have obtained with the spinning-wheel and hand- 
loom. William when he borrows a plane from James does 
not in that obtain the advantage of the increased efficiency 
of labor when using a plane for the smoothing of boards 
over what it has when smoothing them with a shell or flint. 
The progress of knowledge has made the advantage in- 
volved in the use of planes a common property and power 
of labor. What he gets from James is merely such ad- 
vantage as the element of a year’s time will give to the 
possession of so much capital as is represented by the 
plane. 

Now, if the vital forces of nature which give an advantage 
to the element of time be the cause of interest, it would 
seem to follow that this maximum rate of interest would 
be determined by the strength of these forces and the ex- 
tent to which they are engaged in production. But while 
the reproductive force of nature seems to vary enormously, 
as, for instance, between the salmon, which spawns thou- 
sands of eggs, and the whale, which brings forth a single 
calf at intervals of years; between the rabbit and the ele- 
phant, the thistle and the gigantic redwood, it appears 
from the way the natural balance is maintained that there 
is an equation between the reproductive and destructive 
forces of nature, which in effect brings the principle of in- 
crease to a uniform point. This natural balance man has 
within narrow limits the power to disturb, and by the 
modification of natural conditions may avail himself at will 
of the varying strength of the reproductive force in nature. 
But when he does so, there arises from the wide scope of 
his desires another principle which brings about in the in- 
crease of wealth a similar equation and balance to that 
which is effected in nature between the different forms 
of life. This equation exhibits itself through values. If, 
in a country adapted to both, I go to raising rabbits and 
you to raising horses, my rabbits may, until the natural 
limit is reached, increase faster than your horses. But my 
capital will not increase faster, for the effect of the varying 


wf 


178 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Rooks 


rates of increase will be to lower the value of rabbits as 
compared with horses, and to increase the value of horses 
as compared with rabbits. 

Though the varying strength of the vital forces of nature 
is thus brought to uniformity, there may be a difference 
in the different stages of social development as to the pro- 
portionate extent to which, in the aggregate production of 
wealth, these vital forces are enlisted. But as to this, there 
are two remarks to be made. In the first place, although 
in such a country as England the part taken by manufac- 
tures in the aggregate wealth production has very much 
- increased as compared with the part taken by agriculture, 
yet itis to be noticed that to a very great extent this is 
only true of the political or geographical division, and not 
of the industrial community. JFor industrial communi- 
ties are not limited by political divisions, or bounded 
by seas or mountains. They are only limited by the 
scope of their exchanges, and the proportion which in the 
industrial economy of England agriculture and stock- 
raising bear to manufactures is averaged with Iowa and 
Illinois, with Texas and California, with Canada and 
India, with Queensland and the Baltic—in short, with 
every country to which the world-wide exchanges of Eng- 
land extend. In thc next place, it is to be remarked that 
although in the progress of civilization the tendency is to 
tho relative increase of manufactures, as compared with 
agriculturo, and consequently to a proportionately less 
reliance upon the reproductive forces of nature, yet this is 
accompanied by a corresponding extension of exchanges, 
and hence a greater calling in of the power of inereaso 
which thus arises. So these tendencies, to a great extent, 
and, probably, so far as we have yet gone, completely, 
balance each other, and preserve the equilibrium which 
fixes the average increase of capital, or the normal rate of 
interest. 

Now, this normal point of interest, which lies between 
- the necessary maximum and the necessary minimum of the 
‘return to capital, must, wherever it rests, be such that all 


Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 179 


things (such as the feeling of security, desire for accumu- 
lation, etc.) considered, the reward of capital and the 
reward of labor will be equal—that is to say, will give 
an equally attractive result for the exertion or sacrifice 
involved. It is impossible, perhaps, to formulate this 
point, as wages are habitually estimated in quantity, and 
interest in a ratio; but if we suppose a given quantity of 
wealth to be the produce of a given amount of labor, co 
operating for a stated time with a certain amount of 
capital, the proportion in which the produce would 
be divided between the labor and the capital would 
afford a comparison. There must be such a point at, or 
rather, about, which the rate of interest must tend to 
settle; since, unless such an equilibrium were effected, 
labor would not accept the use of capital, or capital would 
not be placed at the disposal of labor. For labor and cap- 
ital are but different forms of the same thing—human 
exertion. Capital is produced by labor; it is, in fact, but 
labor impressed upon matter—labor stored up in matter, 
to be released again as needed, as the heat of the sun 
stored up in coal is released in the furnace. The use of 
capital in production is, therefore, but a mode of labor. 
As capital can only be used by being consumed, its use is 
the expenditure of labor, and for the maintenance of cap- 
ital, its production by labor must be commensurate with 
its consumption in aid of labor. Hence the principle 
that, under circumstances which permit free competition, 
operates to bring wages to a common standard and profits 
to a substantial equality—the principle that men will seek 
to gratify their desires with the least exertion—operates to 
establish and maintain this equilibrium between wages and 
interest. 

This natural relation between interest and wages—this 
equilibrium at which both will represent equal returns to 
equal exertions—may be stated in a form which suggests 
a relation of opposition; but this opposition is only appar- 
ent. Ina partnership between Dick and Harry, the state- 
ment that Dick receives a certain proportion of the profits 


180 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 111. 


implies that the portion of Harry is less or greater as 
Dick’s is greater or less; but where, as in this case, each 
gets only what he adds to the common fund, the increase 
of the portion of the one does not decrease what the other 
receives. 

And this relation fixed, it is evident that interest and 
wages must rise and fall together, and that interest cannot 
be increased without increasing wages; ror wages lowered 
without depressing interest. For if wages fall, interest 
must also fallin proportion, else it becomes more profitable 
to turn labor into capital than to apply it directly; while, 
if interest falls, wages must likewise proportionately fall, 
or else the increment of capital would be checked. 

We are, of course, not speaking of particular wages and 
particular interest, but of the general rate of wages and 
the general rate of interest (meaning always by interest 
the return which capital can secure, less insurance and' 
wages of superintendence). In a particular case, or a par- 
ticular empioyment, the tendency of wages and interest to 
an equilibrium may be impeded; but between the general 
rate of wages and the general rate of interest, this tendency 
must be prompt to act. For though in a particular branch 
of production the line may be clearly drawn between those 
who furnish labor and those who furnish capital, yct even 
in communities where there is the sharpest distinction 
between the general class laborers and the general class 
capitalists, these two classes shade off into each other by 
imperceptible gradations, and on the extremes where the 
two classes meet in the same persons, the interaction 
which restores equilibrium, or rather prevents its disturb- 
ance, can go on without obstruction, whatever obstacles 
may exist where the separation is complete. And, further- 
more, it must be remembered, as -has before been stated, 
that capital is but a portion of wealth, distinguished from 
wealth generally only by the purpose to which it is applied, 
and, hence, the whole body of wealth has upon the rela- 
tions of capital and labor the same equalizing effect that a 
fly-wheel has upon the motion of machinery, taking up 


Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 181 


capital when it is in excess and giving it out again when 
there is a deficiency, just as a jeweler may give his wife 
diamonds to wear when he has a superabundant stock, and 
put them in his show-case again when his stock becomes 
reduced. Thus any tendency on the part of interest to rise 
above the equilibrium with wages must immediately beget 
not only a tendency to direct labor to the production of 
capital, but also the application of wealth to the uses of 
capital; while any tendency of wages to rise above the 
equilibrium with interest must in ike manner beget not 
only a tendency to turn labor from the production of 
capital, but also to lessen the proportion of capital by 
diverting from a productive to a non-productive use some 
of the articles of wealth of which capital is composed. 

To recapitulate: There is a certain relation or ratio be- 
tween wages and interest, fixed by causes which, if not 
absolutely permanent, slowly change, at which enough 
labor will be turned into capital to supply the capital 
which, in the degree of knowledge, state of the arts, 
density of population, character of occupations, variety, 
extent and rapidity of exchanges, will be demanded for 
production, and this relation or ratio the interaction of 
labor and capital constantly maintains; hence interest 
must rise and fall with the rise and fall of wages. 

To illustrate: The price of flour is determined by the 
price of wheat and cost of milling. The cost of milling 
varies slowly and but little, the difference being, even at 
long intervals, hardly perceptible; while the price of wheat 
varies frequently and largely. Hence we correctly say that 
the price of flour is governed by the price of wheat. Or, 
to put the proposition in the same form as the preceding: 
There is a certain relation or ratio between the value of 
wheat and the value of flour, fixed by the cost of milling, 
which relation or ratio the interaction between the demand 
for flour and the supply of wheat constantly maintains; 
hence the price of flour must rise and fall with the rise and 
fall of the price of wheat. 

Or, as, leaving the connecting link, the price of wheat, to 


182 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 111 


inference, we say that the price of flour depends upon the 
character of the seasons, wars, etc., so may we put the law 
of interest in a form which directly connects it with the law 
of rent, by saying that the general rate of interest will be 
determined by the return to capital upon the poorest land 
to which capital is freely applied—that is to say, upon the 
best land open to it without the payment of rent. Thus 
we bring the law of interest into a form which shows it to 
be a corollary of the law of rent. 

We may prove this conclusion in another way: For that 
interest must decrease as rent increases, we can plainly see 
if we eliminate wages. To do this, we must, to be sure, 
imagine a universe organized on totally different principles. 
Nevertheless, we may imagine what Carlyle would call a 
fool’s paradise, where the production of wealth went on 
without the aid of labor, and solely by the reproductive 
force of capital—where sheep bore ready-made clothing on 
their backs, cows presented butter and cheese, and oxen, 
when they got to the proper point of fatness, carved them- 
selves into beefsteaks and roasting ribs; where houses 
grew from the seed, and a jack-knife thrown upon thc 
ground would take root and in due time bear a crop of 
assorted cutlery. Imagine certain capitalists transported, 
with their capital in appropriate forms, to such a place. 
Manifestly, they would only get, as the return for their cap- 
ital, the whole amount of wealth it produced, so long as 
none of its produce was demanded as rent. When rent 
arose, it would come out of the produce of capital, and as 
it increased, the return to the owners of capital must neces- 
sarily diminish. If we imagine the place where capital 
possessed this power of producing wealth without the aid 
of labor to be of limited extent, say an island, we shall see 
that as soon as capital had increased to the limit of the 
island to support it, the return to capital must fall to a 
trifle above its minimum of mere replacement, and the 
land owners would receive nearly the whole produce as rent, 
for the only alternative capitalists would have would be to 
throw their capital into the sea. Or, if we imagine such 


Chap. V. THE LAW OF INTEREST. 183 


an island to be in communication with the rest of the 
world, the return to capital would settle at the rate of 
return in other places. Interest there would be neither 
higher nor lower than anywhere else. Rent would obtain 
the whole of the superior advantage, and the land of such 
an island would have a great value. 

To sum up, the law of interest is this: 

The relation between wages and interest is determined by the 

average power of increase which attaches to capital from its 
use in reproductive modes. As rent arises, interest will fall 
as wages fall, or will be determined by the margin of cultiva- 
tion. 
I have endeavored at this length to trace out and illus- 
trate the law of interest more in deference to the existing 
terminology and modes of thought than from the real 
necessities of our inquiry, were it unembarrassed by befog- 
ging discussions. In truth, the primary division of wealth 
in distribution is dual, not tripartite. Capital is but a form 
of labor, and its distinction from labor is in reality but a 
subdivision, just as the division of labor into skilled and 
unskilled would be. In our examination we have reached 
the same point as would have been attained had we simply 
treated capital as a form of labor, and sought the law 
which divides the produce between rent and wages; that 
is to say, between the possessors of the two factors, natural 
substances and powers, and human exertion—which two 
factors by their union produce all wealth. 


/ 
\ 


V 


CHAPTER VI. 
WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 


We have by inference already obtained the law of wages. 
But to verify the deduction and to strip the subject of all 
ambiguities, let us seek the law from an independent start- 
ing point. 

There is, of course, no such thing as a common rate of 
wages, in the sense that there is at any given time and 
place a common rate of interest. Wages, which include all 
returns received from labor, not only vary with the differ- 
ing powers of individuals, but, as the organization of 
society becomes elaborate, vary largely as between occupa- 
tions. Nevertheless, there is a certain genera] relation 
between all wages, so that we express a clear and well- 
understood idea when we say that wages are higher or 
lower in one time or place than in another. In their 
degrees, wages rise and fall in obedience to a common law. 
What is this law? 

The fundamental principle of human action—the law 
that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is 
to physics—is that men seek to gratify their desires with 
the least exertion. Evidently, this principle must bring to 
an equality, through the competition it induces, the reward 
gained by equal exertions under similar circumstances. 
When men work for themselves, this equalization will be 
largely affected by the equation of prices; and between 
those who work for themselves and those who work for 
others, the same tendency to equalization will operate. 
Now, under this principle, what, in conditions of freedom, 
will be the terms at which one man can hire others to work 
for him? Evidently, they will be fixed by what the men 
could make if laboring for themselves. The principle 


Chap. V1. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES, 185 


which will prevent him from having to give anything above 
this, except what is necessary to induce the change, will 
also prevent them from taking less. Did they demand 
more, the competition of others would prevent them from. 
getting employment. Did he offer less, none would ac- 
cept the terms, as they could obtain greater results by 
working for themselves. Thus, although the employer 
wishes to pay as little as possible, and the employee to 
receive as much as possible, wages will be fixed by the 
value or produce of such labor to the laborers themselves. 
If wages are temporarily carried either above or below 
this line, a tendency to carry them back at once arises. 

But the result, or the earnings of labor, as is readily 
seen in those primary and fundamental occupations in 
which labor first engages, and which, even in the most 
highly developed condition of society, still form the base of 
production, does not depend merely upon the intensity or 
quality of the labor itself. Wealth is the product of two 
factors, land and labor, and what a given amount of labor 
will yield will vary with the powers of the natural oppor- 
tunities to which it is applied. This being the case, the 
principle that men seek to gratify their desires with the 
least exertion will fix wages at the produce of such labor at 
the point of highest natural productiveness open to it. 
Now, by virtue of the same principle, the highest point 
of natural productiveness open to labor under existing 
conditions will be the lowest point at which production 
continues, for men, impelled by a supreme law of the 
human mind to seek the satisfaction of their desires with 
the least exertion, will not expend labor at a lower point 
of productiveness while a higher is open to them. Thus 
the wages which an employer must pay will be measured 
by the lowest point of natural productiveness to which 
production extends, and wages will rise or fall as this point 
rises or falls. 

To illustrate: Ina simple state of society, each man, as 
is the primitive mode, works for himself—some in hunting, 
let us say, some in fishing, some in cultivating the ground. 


186 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 111. 


Cultivation, we will suppose, has just begun, and the land 
in use is all of the same quality, yielding a similar return 
to similar exertions. Wages, therefore—for, though there 
is neither employer nor employed, there are yet wages— 
will be the full produce of labor, and, making allowance 
for the difference of agreeableness, risk, etc., in the three 
pursuits, they will be on the average equal in each—that 
is to say, equal exertions will yield equal results. Now, if 
one of their number wishes to employ some of his fellows 
to work for him instead of for themselves, he must pay 
wages fixed by this full, average produce of labor. 

Let a period of time elapse. Cultivation has extended, 
and, instead of land of the same quality, embraces lands of 
different qualities. Wages, now, will not be as before, the 
average produce of labor. They will be the average produce 
of labor at the margin of cultivation, or the point of lowest- 
return. For, as men seek to satisfy their desires with the 
least possible exertion, the point of lowest return in culti- 
vation must yield to labora return equivalent to the aver- 
age return in hunting and fishing.* Labor will no longer 
yield equal returns to equal exertions, but those who 
expend their labor on the superior land will obtain a greater 
produce for the same exertion than those who cultivate the 
inferior land. Wages, however, will still be equal, for this 
excess which the cultivators of the superior land receive is 
in reality rent, and if land has been subjected to individual 
ownership will give it a value. Now, if, under these 
changed circumstances, one member of this community 
wishes to hire others to work for him, he will only have 
to pay what the labor yields at the lowest point of cultiva- 
tion. If thereafter the margin of cultivation sinks to points 
of lower and lower productiveness, so must wages sink ; if, 
on the contrary, it rises, so also must wages rise; for, just 
as a free body tends to take the shortest route to the earth’s 
center, so do men seek the easiest mode to the gratification 
of their desires. | 


* This equalization will be effected by the equation of prices. 


Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 187 


Here, then, we have the law of wages, as a deduction from 
a principle most obvious and most universal. That wages 
depend upon the margin of cultivation—that they will be 
greater or less as the produce which labor can obtain from 
the highest natural opportunities open to it is greater or 
less, flows from the principle that men will seek to satisfy 
their wants with the least exertion. 
; Now, if we turn from simple social states to the complex — 
phenomena of highly civilized societies, we shall find upon 
examination that they also fall under this law. 

In such societies, wages differ widely, but they still bear 
a more or less definite and obvious relation to each other. 
This relation is not invariable, as at one time a philosopher 
of repute may earn by his lectures many fold the wages of 
the best mechanic, and at another can hardly hope for the 
pay of a footman; as in a great city occupations may yield 
relatively high wages, which in a new settlement would 
yield relatively low wages; yet these variations between 
wages may, under all conditions, and in spite of arbitrary 
divergences caused by custom, law, etc., be traced to cer- 
tain circumstances. In one of his most interesting chapters, 
Adam Smith thus enumerates the principal circumstances 
‘‘which make up for a small pecuniary gain in some 
employments and counterbalance a great one in others: 
First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employ- 
ments themselves. Secondly, the easiness and cheapness, 
or the difficulty and expense of learning them. Thirdly, 
the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them. 
Fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed 
in them. Fifthly, the probability or improbability of suc- 
cess in them.”* Itis not necessary to dwell in detail on 
these causes of variation in wages between different em- 
ployments. They have been admirably explained and il- 
lustrated by Adam Smith and the economists who have 
followed him, who have well worked out the details, even 
if they have failed to apprehend the main law. 


* This last, which is analogous to the element of risk in profits, accounts for the 
high wages of successful lawyers, physicians, contractors, actors, etc, 


188 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book IIL 


The effect of all the circumstances which give rise to the 
differences between wages in different occupations may be 
included as supply and demand, and it is perfectly correct 
to say that the wages in different occupations will vary rela- 
tively according to differences in the supply and demand 
of labor—meaning by demand the call which the commu- 
nity as a whole makes for services of the particular kind, 
and by supply the relative amount of labor which, under 
the existing conditions, can be determined to the perform- 
ance of those particular services. But though this is true 
as to the relative differences of wages, when it is said, as is 
commonly said, that the general rate of wages is deter- 
mined by supply and demand, the words are meaningless. 
For supply and demand are but relative terms. The supply 
of labor can only mean labor offered in exchange for labor 
or the produce of labor, and the demand for labor can only 
mean labor or the produce of labor offered in exchange for 
labor. Supply is thus demand, and demand supply, and, 
in the whole community, one must be co-extensive with the 
other. This is clearly apprehended by the current political 
economy in relation to sales, and the reasoning of Ricardo, 
‘Mill, and others, which proves that alterations in supply 
and demand cannot produce a general rise or fall of values, 
though they may cause a rise or fall in the value of a par- 
ticular thing, is as applicable to labor. What conceals the 
absurdity of speaking generally of supply and demand in 
reference to labor is the habit of considering the demand 
for labor as springing from capital and as something dis- 
tinct from labor; but the analysis to which this idea has 
been heretofore subjected has sufficiently shown its fallacy. 
It is indeed evident from the mere statement, that wages 
can never permanently exceed the produce of labor, and 
hence that there is no fund from which wages can for 
any time be drawn, save that which labor constantly 
creates. 

But, though all the circumstances which produce the dif- 
ferences in wages between occupations may be considered as 
operating through supply and demand, they (or, rather, 


Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 189 


their effects, for sometimes the same cause operates in both 
ways) may be separated into two classes, according as 
they tend only to raise apparent wages or as they tend to 
raise real wages—that is, to increase the average reward for 
equal exertion. The high wages of some occupations 
much resemble what Adam Smith compares them to, the 
prizes of a lottery, in which the great gain of one is made 
up from the losses of many others. This is not only true of 
the professions by means of which Dr. Smith illustrates the 
principle, but is largely true of the wages of superinten- 
dence in mercantile pursuits, as shown by the fact that 
over ninety per cent. of the mercantile firms that commence 
business ultimately fail. The higher wages of those occu- 
pations which can only be prosecuted in certain states of 
the weather, or are otherwise intermittent and uncertain, are 
also of this class; while differences that arise from hard- 
ship, discredit, unhealthiness, etc., imply differences of 
sacrifice, the increased compensation for which only pre- 
serves the level of equal returns for equal exertions. All 
these differences are, in fact, equalizations, arising from cir- 
cumstances which, to use the words of Adam Smith, 
‘‘ make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments 
and counterbalance a great one in others.” But, besides 
these merely apparent differences, there are real differences 
in wages between occupations, which are caused by the 
greater or less rarity of the qualities required—greater 
abilities or skill, whether natural or acquired, commanding 
on the average greater wages. Now, these qualities, whether 
natural or acquired, are essentially analogous to differences 
in strength and quickness in manual labor, and as in man- 
ual labor the higher wages paid the man who can do more 
would be based upon wages paid to those who can only do 
the average amount, so wages in the occupations requiring 
superior abilities and skill must depend upon the common 
wages paid for ordinary abilities and skill. 

It is, indeed, evident from observation, as it must be from 
theory, that whatever be the circumstances which produce 
the differences of wages in different occupations, and al- 


190 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book III. 


though they frequently vary in relation to each other, pro- 
ducing, as between time and time, and place and place, 
greater or less relative differences, yet the rate of wages in 
one occupation is always dependent on the rate in another, 
and so on, down, until the lowest and widest stratum of 
wages is reached, in occupations where the demand is more 
nearly uniform and in which there is the greatest freedom 
to engage. 

For, although barriers of greater or less difficulty may 
exist, the amount of labor which can be determined to any 
particular pursuit is nowhere absolutely fixed. All me- 
chanics could act as laborers, and many laborers could 
readily become mechanics; all storekeepers could act as 
shopmen, and many shopmen could easily become store- 
keepers; many farmers would, upon inducement, become 
hunters or miners, fishermen or sailors, and many hunters, 
miners, fishermen, and sailors know enough of farming to 
turn their hands to it on demand. In each occupation 
there are men who unite it with others, or who alternate 
between occupations, while the young men who are con- 
stantly coming in to fill up the ranks of labor are drawn in 
the direction of the strongest inducements and least re- 
sistances. And further than this, all the gradations of 
wages shade into each other by imperceptible degrees, in- 
stead of being separated by clearly defined gulfs. The 
wages, even of the poorer paid mechanics, are generally 
higher than the wages of simple laborers, but there are 
always some mechanics who do not, on the whole, make as 
much as some laborers; the best paid lawyers receive 
much higher wages than the best paid clerks, but the best 
paid clerks make more than some lawyers, and in fact the 
worst paid clerks make more than the worst paid lawyers. 
Thus, on the verge of each occupation, stand those to whom 
the inducements between one occupation and another are 
so nicely balanced that the slightest change is sufficient to 
determine their labor in one direction or another. Thus, 
any increase or decrease in the demand for labor of a cer- 
tain kind cannot, except temporarily, raise wages, in that 


Chap. V1. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 191 


occupation, above, nor depress them below, the relative level 
with wages in other occupations, which is determined by 
the circumstances previously adverted to, such as relative 
agreeableness or continuity of employment, etc., etc. 
Even, as experience shows, where artificial barriers are im- 
posed to this interaction, such as limiting laws, guild 
regulations, the establishment of caste, etc., they may in- 
terfere with, but cannot prevent, the maintenance of this 
equilibrium. They but operate as dams, which pile up the 
water of a stream above its natural level, but cannot pre- 
vent its overflow. 

Thus, although they may from time to time alter in re- 
lation to each other, as the circumstances which determine 
relative levels change, yet it is evident that wages in all 
strata must ultimately depend upon wages in the lowest 
and widest stratum—the general rate of wages rising or 
falling as these rise or fall. 

Now, the primary and fundamental occupations, upon 
which, so to speak, all others are built up, are evidently 
those which procure wealth directly from nature; hence the 
law of wages in them must be the general law of wages. 
And, as wages in such occupations clearly depend upon what 
labor can produce at the lowest point of natural produc- 
tiveness to which it is habitually applied; therefore, wages 
generally, depend upon the margin of cultivation, or, to put 
it more exactly, upon the highest point of natural produc- 
tiveness to which labor is free to apply itself without the 
payment of rent. 

So obvious is this law that it is often apprehended with- 
out being recognized. Itis frequently said of such countries 
as California and Nevada that cheap labor would enor- 
mously aid their development, as it would enable the 
working of the poorer but most extensive deposits of ore. 
A relation between low wages and a low point of production 
is perceived by those who talk in this way, but they invert 
cause and effect. It is not low wages which will cause the 
working of low-grade ore, but the extension of production 
to the lower point which will diminish wages. If wages 


192 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book LIL 


could be arbitrarily forced down, as has sometimes been 
attempted by statute, the poorer mines would not be worked 
so long as richer mines could be worked. But if the mar- 
gin of production were arbitrarily forced down, as it might 
be, were the superior natural opportunities in the owner- 
ship of those who chose rather to wait for future increase 
of value than to permit them to be used now, wages would 
necessarily fall. 

The demonstration is complete. The law of wages we 
have thus obtained is that which we previously obtained 
as the corollary of the law of rent, and it completely har- 
monizes with the law of interest. Itis, that— 


Wages depend upon the margin of production, or upon the 
produce which labor can obtain at the highest point of natural 
productiveness open to it without the payment of rent. 


This law of wages accords with and explains universal 
facts that without its apprehension seem unrelated and con- 
tradictory It shows that: 

Where land is free and labor is unassisted by capital, the 
whole produce will go to labor as wages. 

Where land is free and labor is assisted by capital, wages 
will consist of the whole produce, less that part necessary 
to induce the storing up of labor as capital. 

Where land is subject to ownership and rent arises, 
wages will be fixed by what labor could secure from the 
highest natural opportunities open to it without the pay- 
ment of rent. 

Where natural opportunities are all monopolized, wages 
may be forced by the competition among laborers to the 
minimum at which laborers will consent to reproduce. 

This necessary minimum of wages (which by Smith and 
Ricardo is denominated the point of ‘‘ natural wages,” 
and by Mill supposed to regulate wages, which will be 
higher or lower as the working classes consent to repro- 
duce at a higher or lower standard of comfort) is, however, 
included in the law of wages as previously stated, as it is 
evident that the margin of production cannot fall below 


Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES, 193 


that point at which enough will be left as wages to secure 
the maintenance of labor. 

Like Ricardo’s law of rent, of which it is the corollary, 
this law of wages carries with it its own proof and becomes 
self-evident by mere statement. For itis but an applica- 
tion of the central truth that is the foundation of economic 
reasoning—that men will seek to satisfy their desires with 
the least exertion. The average man will not work for an 
employer for less, all things considered, than he can earn 
by working for himself; nor yet will he work for himself 
for less than he can earn by working for an employer, and 
hence the return which labor can secure from such nat- 
ural opportunities as are free to it must fix the wages which 
labor everywhere gets. That is to say, the line of rent is 
the necessary measure of the line of wages. In fact, the 
accepted law of rent depends for its recognition upon a 
previous (though in many cases it seems to be an uncon- 
scious) acceptance of this law of wages. What makes it 
evident that land of a particular quality will yield as rent 
the surplus of its produce over that of the least productive 
land in use, is the apprehension of the fact that the owner 
of the higher quality of land can procure the labor to work 
his land by the payment of what that labor could produce 
if exerted upon land of the poorer quality. 

In its simpler manifestations, this law of wages is recog- 
nized by people who do not trouble themselves about polit- 
ical economy, just as the fact that a heavy body would fall 
to the earth was long recognized by those who never 
thought of the law of gravitation. It does not require a 
philosopher to see that if in any country natural opportu- 
nities were thrown open which would enable laborers to 
make for themselves wages higher than the lowest now 
paid, the general rate of wages would rise; while the most 
ignorant and stupid of the placer miners of early California 
knew that as the placers gave out or were monopolized, . 
wages must fall. It requires no fine spun theory to ex- 
plain why wages are so high relatively to production in new 
countries where land is yet unmonopolized. The cause is 


194 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. Book 111 


on the surface. One man will not work for another for less 
than his labor will really yield, when he can go upon the 
next quarter section and take up a farm for himself. It is 
only as land becomes monopolized and these natural oppor- 
tunities are shut off from labor, that laborers are obliged to 
compete with each other for employment, and it becomes 
possible for the farmer to hire hands to do his work while 
he maintains himself on the difference between what their 
labor produces and what he pays them for it. 

Adam Smith himself saw the cause of high wages where 
land was yet open to settlement, though he failed to appre- 
ciate the importance and connection of the fact. In treat- 
ing of the Causes of the Prosperity of New Colonies 
(Chapter VII, Book IV, ‘‘ Wealth of Nations,”) he says: 


‘¢ Every colonist gets more land than he can possibly cultivate. He 
has no rent and scarce any taxes to pay. * * He is eager, there- 
fore, to collect laborers from every quarter and to pay them the most 
liberal wages. But these liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheap- 
ness of land, soon make these laborers leave himin order to become 
landlords themselves, and to reward with equal liberality other laborers 
who soon leave them for the same reason they left their first masters.”’ 


This chapter contains numerous expressions which, lke 
the opening sentence in the chapter on The Wages of 
Labor, show that Adam Smith only failed to appreciate the 
true laws of the distribution of wealth because he turned 
away from the more primitive forms of society to look for 
first principles amid complex social manifestations, where 
he was blinded by a pre-accepted theory of the func- 
tions of capital, and, as it seems to me, by a vague accept- 
ance of the doctrine which, two years after his death, was 
formulated by Malthus. And itis impossible to read the 
works of the economists who since the time of Smith have 
endeavored to build up and elucidate the science of politi- 
cal economy without seeing how, over and over again, they 
stumble over the law of wages without once recognizing it. 
Yet, ‘‘if it were a dog it would bite them!’’ Indeed, it is 
difficult to resist the impression that some of them really 
saw this law of wages, but, fearful of the practical conclu- 
sions to which it would lead, preferred to ignore and cover 


Chap. VI. WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES. 195 


it up, rather than use it as the key to problems which with- 
out it are so perplexing. A great truth to an age which 
has rejected and trampled on it, is not‘a word of peace, but 
a sword ! 

Perhaps it may be well to remind the reader, before clos- 
ing this chapter, of what has been before stated—that I am 
using the word wages not in the sense of a quantity, but in 
the sense of a proportion. When I say that wages fall as 
rent rises, I do not mean that the quantity of wealth ob- 
tained by laborers as wages is necessarily less, but that 
the proportion which it bears to the whole produce 
is necessarily less. The proportion may diminish while 
the quantity remains the same or even increases. If 
the margin of cultivation descends from the productive 
point which we will call 25, to the productive point 
we will call 20, the rent of all lands that before paid 
rent will increase by this difference, and the proportion 
of the whole produce which goes to laborers as wages 
will to the same extent diminish; but if, in the meantime, 
the advance of the arts or the economies that become pos- 
sible with greater population have so increased the pro- 
ductive power of labor that at 20 the same exertion will 
produce as much wealth as’ before at 25, laborers will get 
as wages as great a quantity as before, and the relative fall 
of wages will not be noticeable in any diminution of the. 
necessaries or comforts of the laborer, but only in the in- 
creased value of land and the greater incomes and more 
lavish expenditure of the rent-receiving class. 


\ 


CHAPTER VII. 
THE CORRELATION AND CO-ORDINATION OF THESE LAWS. 


The conclusions we have reached as to the laws which 
govern the distribution of wealth recast a large and most 
important part of the science of political economy, as at 
present taught, overthrowing some of its most highly elab- 
orated theories and: shedding a new light on some of its 
most important problems. Yet, in doing this, no disput- 
able ground has been occupied; not a single fundamental 
principle advanced that is not already recognized. 

The law of interest and the law of wages which we have 
substituted for those now taught are necessary deductions 
from the great law which alone makes any science of politi- 
cal economy possible—the all-compelling law that is as 
inseparable from the human mind as attraction is insepara- 
ble from matter, and without which it would be impossible 
to previse or calculate upon any human action, the most 
trivial or the most important. This fundamental law, that 
men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion, 
becomes, when viewed in its relation to one of the factors 
of production, the law of rent; in relation to another, the 
law of interest; and in relation to a third, the law of wages. 
And in accepting the law of rent, which, since the time of 
Ricardo, has been accepted by every economist of standing, 
and which, like a geometrical axiom, has but to be under- 
stood to compel assent, the law of interest and law of wages, 
as I have stated them, are inferentially accepted, as its 
necessary sequences. In fact, it is only relatively that they 
can be called sequences, as in the recognition of the law of 
rent they too must be recognized. For on what depends 
the recognition of the law of rent? Evidently upon the 
recognition of the fact that the effect of competition is ta 


Chap. VIL. CORRELATION OF THESE LAWS. 197 


prevent the return”to labor and capital being anywhere 
greater than upon the poorest land in use. It is in seeing 
this that we see that the owner of land will be able to 
claim as rent all of its produce which exceeds what would 
be yielded to an equal application of labor and capital on 
the poorest land in use. 

The harmony and correlation of the laws of distribution 
as we have now apprehended them are in striking contrast 
with the want of harmony which characterizes these laws 
as presented by the current political economy. Let us 
state them side by side: | 


The True Statement. 


Rent depends on the margin 
of cultivation, rising as it 
falls and falling as it rises. 


The Current Statement. 
Rent depends on the margin 

of cultivation, rising as it 

falls and falling as it rises. 


Waces depend upon the ra- | Wages depend on the mar- 


tio between the number of 
laborers and the amount 
of capital devoted to their 
employment. 


InrerEst depends upon the 
equation between the sup- 
ply of and demand for 
capital; or, as is stated of 
profits, upon wages (or the 
cost of labor), rising as 
wages fall, and falling as 
wages rise. 


gin of cultivation, falling 
as it falls and rising as it 
rises. 


Interest (its ratio with wa- 


ges being fixed by the net 
power of increase which 
attaches to capital) de- 
pends on the margin of 
cultivation, falling as it 
falls and rising as it rises. 


In the current statement the laws of distribution have 
no common center, no mutual relation; they are not the 
correlating divisions of a whole, but measures of different 
qualities. In the statement we have given, they spring 
from one point, support and supplement each other, and 
form the correlating divisions of a complete whole. 


CHAPTER VIII. 
THE STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED, 


We have now obtained a clear, simple, and consistent 
theory of the distribution of wealth, which accords with 
first principles and existing facts, and which, when under- 
stood, will commend itself as self-evident. 

Before working out this theory, I have deemed it neces- 
sary to conclusively show the insufficiency of current 
theories; for, in thought, as in action, the majority of men 
do but follow their leaders, and a theory of wages which 
has not merely the support of the highest names, but is 
firmly rooted in common opinions and prejudices, will, until 
it has been proved untenable, prevent any other theory 
from being even considered, just as the theory that the 
earth was the center of the universe prevented any consid- 
eration of the theory that it revolves on its own axis and 
circles round the sun, until it was clearly shown that the 
apparent movements of the heavenly bodies could not be 
explained in accordance with the theory of the fixity of the 
earth. 

There is in truth a marked resemblance between the 
science of political economy, as at present taught, and the 
science of astronomy, as taught previous to the recognition 
of the Copernican theory. The devices by which the current 
political economy endeavors to explain the social phe-- 
nomena that are now forcing themselves upon the attention 
of the civilized world may well be compared to the elabor- 
ate system of cycles and epicycles constructed by the 
learned to explain the celestial phenomena in a manner ac- 
cording with the dogimas of authority and the rude im- 
pressions and prejudices of the unlearned. And, just as 
the observations which showed that this theory of cycles 


Chap. VIII, STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED, 199 


and epicycles could not explain all the phenomena of the 
heavens, cleared the way for the consideration of the sim- 
pler theory that supplanted it, so will a recognition of the 
inadequacy of the current theories to account for social 
phenomena clear the way for the consideration of a theory 
that will give to political economy all the simplicity and 
harmony which the Copernican theory gave to the science of 
astronomy. 

But at this point the parallel ceases. That ‘‘the fixed 
and steadfast earth” should be really whirling through 
space with inconceivable velocity is repugnant to the first 
apprehensions of men in every state and situation; but the 
truth I wish to make clear is naturally perceived, and has 
been recognized in the infancy of every people, being only 
obscured by the complexities of the civilized state, the 
warpings of selfish interests, and the false direction which 
the speculations of the learned have taken. To recognize 
it, we have but to come back to first principles and heed 
simple perceptions. Nothing can be clearer than the prop- 
osition that the failure of wages to increase with increasing 
productive power is due to the increase of rent. 

Three things unite to production—labor, capital, and 
land, 

Three parties divide the produce—the laborer, the capi- 
talist, and the land owner. 

If, with an increase of production, the laborer gets no 
more and the capitalist no more, it is a necessary inference 
that the land owner reaps the whole gain. 

And the facts agree with the inference. Though neither 
wages nor interest anywhere increase as material progress 
goes on, yet the invariable accompaniment and mark of 
material progress is the increase of rent—the rise of land 
values. 

The increase of rent explains why wages and interest do 
not increase. The cause which gives to the land holder is 
the cause which denies to the laborer and capitalist. That 
wages and interest are higher in new than in old countries 
is not, as the standard economists say, because nature 


2.00 THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION. be tat 


makes a greater return to the application of labor and cap- 
ital, but because land is cheaper, and, therefore, as a 
smaller proportion of the return is taken by rent, labor 
and capital can keep for their share a larger proportion of 
what nature does return. Itis not the total produce, but 
the net produce, after rent has been taken from it, that de- 
termines what can be divided as wages and _ interest. 
Hence, the rate of wages and interest is everywhere fixed, 
not so much by the productiveness of labor as by the value 
of land. Wherever the value of land is relatively low, 
wages and interest are relatively high; wherever land is 
relatively high, wages and interest are relatively low. 

If production had not passed the simple stage in which 
all labor is directly applied to the land and all wages are 
paid. in its produce, the fact that when the land owner 
takes a larger portion the laborer must put up with a 
smaller portion could not be lost sight of. 

But the complexities of production in the civilized state, 
in which so great a partis borne by exchange, and so much — 
labor is bestowed upon materials after they have been sep- 
arated from the land, though they may to the unthinking dis- 
guise, do not alter the fact that all production is still the 
union of the two factors, land and labor, and that rent (the 
share of the land holder) cannot be increased except at the 
expense of wages (the share of the laborer) and interest 
(the share of capital). Just as the portion of the crop, 
which in the simpler forms of industrial organization the 
owner of agricultural land receives at the end of the harvest 
as his rent, lessens the amount left to the cultivator as 
wages and interest, so does the rental of land on which 
a manufacturing or commercial city is built, lessen the 
amount which can be divided as wages and interest be- 
tween the labor and capital there engaged in the production 
and exchange of wealth. 

In short, the value of land depending wholly upon the 
power which its ownership gives of appropriating wealth 
created by labor, the increase of land values is always at 
the expense of the value of labor. And, hence, that the 


Chap. VIII. STATICS OF THE PROBLEM THUS EXPLAINED. 201 


increase of productive power does not increase wages, is 
because it does increase the value of land. Rent swallows 
up the whole gain and pauperism accompanies progress. 

It is unnecessary to refer to facts. They will suggest 
themselves to the reader. ‘It is the general fact, observa- 
ble everywhere, that as the value of land increases, so does 
the contrast between wealth and want appear. It is the 
universal fact, that where the value of land is highest, civ- 
ilization exhibits the greatest luxury side by side with the 
most piteous destitution. To see human beings in the 
most abject, the most helpless and hopeless condition, you 
must go, not to the unfenced prairies and the log cabins of 
new clearings in the backwoods, where man single-handed is 
commencing the struggle with nature, and land is yet worth 
nothing, but to the great cities, where the ownership of a 
little patch of ground is a fortune. 


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EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE 
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 


CHAPTER I1.—THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEEK, 

CHAPTER II.—EFFECT OF INCREASE OF POPULATION UPON THE DIS- 
TRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 

CHAPTER III.—EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS UPON THE DIS- 
TRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 

CHAPTER IV.—EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION RAISED BY MATERIAL 
PROGRESS. 


Hitherto, it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened 
the day’s toil of any human being.—John Stuart Mill. 


Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
Ere the sorrow comes with years ? 
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
And that cannot stop their tears. 
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ; 
The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
The young fawns are playing with the shadows ; 
The young flowers are blowing towards the west— 
But the young, young children, O, my brothers, 
They are weeping bitterly ! 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
In the country of the free. 
—Mrs. Browning. 


Gov ADP TE Riot. 
THE DYNAMICS OF THE PROBLEM YET TO SEEK. 


In identifying rent as the receiver of the increased pro- 
duction which material progress gives, but which labor 
fails to obtain; in seeing that the antagonism of interests 
is not between labor and capital, as is popularly believed, 
but is in reality between labor and capital on the one side 
and land ownership on the other, we have reached a con- 
clusion that has most important practical bearings. But 
it is not worth while to dwell on them now, for we have not 
yet fully solved the problem which was at the outset pro- 
posed. To say that wages remain low because rent advances, 
is like saying that a steamboat moves because its wheels 
turn around. The further question is, what causes rent to: 
advance? What is the force or necessity that, as produc- 
tive power increases, distributes a greater and greater 
proportion of the produce as rent? 

The only cause pointed out by Ricardo as advancing rent 
is the increase of population, which by requiring larger sup- 
plies of food necessitates the extension of cultivation to 
inferior lands, or to points of inferior production on the 
same lands, and in current works of other authors attention 
is so exclusively directed to the extension of production 
from superior to inferior lands as the cause of advancing 
rents that Mr. Carey (followed by Professor Perry and 
others) has imagined that he has overthrown the Ricardian 
theory of rent by denying that the progress of agriculture 
is from better to worse lands.* 


* As to this, it may be worth while to say: (1) That the general fact, as shown by 
the progress of agriculture in the newer States of the Union and by the character of 
the land left out of cultivation in the older, is that the course of cultivation 7s from the 
better to the worse qualities of land. (2) That, whether the course of production be 
from the absolutely better to the absolutely worse lands or the reverse (and there is 
much to indicate that better or worse in this connection merely relates to our knowl- 
edge, and that future advances may discover compensating qualities in portions of the 
earth now esteemed most sterile), it is always, and from the nature of the human mind, 
must always tend to be, from land under existing conditions deemed better, to land un- 
der existing conditions deemed worse. (3) That Ricardo’s law of rent does not depend 
upon the direction of the extension of cultivation, but upon the proposition that if land 
of a certain quality will yield something, land of a better quality will yield more, 


206 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 


Now, while it is unquestionably true that the increasing 
pressure of population which compels a resort to inferior 
points of production, will raise rents, and does raise rents, 
I do not think that all the deductions commonly made from 
this principle are valid, nor yet that it fully accounts for 
the increase of. rent as material progress goes on. There 
are evidently other causes which conspire to raise rent, but 
which seem to have been wholly or partially hidden by the 
erroneous views as to the functions of capital and genesis 
of wages which have been current. To see what these are, 
and how they operate, let us trace the effect of material 
progress upon the distribution of wealth. 

The changes which constitute or contribute to material 
progress are three: (1) increase in population; (2) improve- 
ments in the arts of production and exchange; and (3) im- 
provements in knowledge, education, government, police, 
manners, and morals, so far as they increase the power of 
producing wealth. Material progress, as commonly under- 
stood, consists of these three elements or directions of 
progression, in all of which the progressive nations have for 
some time past been advancing, though in different degrees. | 
As, considered in the light of material forces or economies, 
the increase of knowledge, the betterment of government, 
etc., have the same effect as improvements in the arts, 
it will not be necessary in this view to consider them 
separately. What bearing intellectual or moral progress, 
merely as such, has upon our problem we may hereafter 
consider. We are at present dealing with material progress, 
to which these things contribute only as they increase 
wealth-producing power, and shall see their effects when 
we see the effect of improvements in the arts, 

To ascertain the effects of material progress upon the 
distribution of wealth, let us, therefore, consider the effects 
of increase of population apart from improvement in the 
arts, and then the effect of improvement in the arts apart 
from increase of population. 


Gy AC Palt ihe UT. 


HE EFFECT OF INCREASE OF POPULATION UPON THE DISTRIBU- 
TION OF WEALTH. 


The manner in which increasing population advances 
rent, as explained and illustrated in current treaticos, is 
that the increased demand for subsistence forces produc- 
tion to inferior soil or to inferior productive points. Thus, 
if, with a given population, the margin of cultivation is at 
30, all lands of productive power over 30 will pay rent. If 
the population be doubled, an additional supply is re- 
quired, which cannot be obtained without an extension of 
cultivation that will cause lands to yield rent that before 
yielded none. If the extension be to 20, then all the land 
between 20 and 30 will yield rent, and have a value, and 
all land over 30 will yield increased rent and have increased 
value. 

It is here that the Malthusian doctrine receives from the 
current elucidations of the theory of rent the support of 
which I spoke when enumerating the causes that have com- 
bined to give that doctrine an almost undisputed sway 
in current thought. According to the Malthusian theory, 
the pressure of population against subsistence becomes 
progressively harder as population increases, and although 
two hands come into the world with every new mouth, it 
becomes, to use the language of John Stuart Mill, harder 
and harder for the new hands to supply the new mouths. 
According to Ricardo’s theory of rent, rent arises from the 
difference in productiveness of the lands in use, and as ex- 
plained by Ricardo and the economists who have followed 
him, the advance in rents which, experience shows, accom- 
panies increasing population, is caused by the inability of 
procuring more food except at a greater cost, which thus 


208 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 


forces the margin of population to lower and lower points 
of production, commensurately increasing rent. Thus the 
two theories, as I have before explained, are made to har- 
monize and blend, the law of rent becoming but a special 
application of the more general law propounded by Mal- 
thus, and the advance of rents with increasing population 
a demonstration of its resistless operation. I refer to 
this incidentally, because it now lies in our way to see the 
misapprehension which has enlisted the doctrine of rent 
in the support of a theory to which it in reality gives no 
countenance. The Malthusian theory has been already dis- 
posed of, and the cumulative disproof which will prevent 
the recurrence of a lingering doubt will be given when it 
is shown, further on, that the phenomena attributed to the 
pressure of population against subsistence would, under ex- 
isting conditions, manifest themselves were population te 
remain stationary. 

The misapprehension to which I now refer, and which, 
to a proper understanding of the effect of increase of pop- 
ulation upon the distribution of wealth, it is necessary to 
clear up, is the presumption, expressed or implied in all 
the current reasoning upon the subject of rent in connec- 
tion with population, that the recourse to lower points of 
production involves a smaller aggregate produce in propor- 
tion to the labor expended; though that this is not always 
the case is clearly recognized in connection with agricultural 
improvements, which, to use the words of Mill, are consid- 
ered ‘‘as a partial relaxation of the bonds which confine 
the increase of population.’’ But it is not involved even 
where there is no advance in the arts, and the recourse to 
lower points of production is clearly the result of the in- 
creased demand of an increased population. For increased 
population, of itself, and without any advance in the arts, 
implies an increase in the productive power of labor. The 
labor of 100 men, other things being equal, will produce 
much more than one hundred times as much as the labor 
of one man, and the labor of 1,000 men much more than 
ten times as much as the labor of 100 men; and, so, with 


Chap. 11. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 209 


every additional pair of hands which increasing population 
brings, there is a more than proportionate addition to the 
productive power of labor. Thus, with an increasing pop- 
ulation, there may be a recourse to lower natural powers of 
production, not only without any diminution in the average 
production of wealth as compared to labor, but without 
any diminution at the lowest point. If population be 
doubled, land of but 20 productiveness may yield to 
the same amount of labor as much as land of 30 pro- 
ductiveness could before yield. For it must not be 
forgotten (what often 7s forgotten) that the productiveness 
either of land or labor is not to ke measured in any one 
thing, but in all desired things. A settler and his family 
may raise as much corn on land a hundred miles away from 
tbe nearest habitation as they could raise were their land 
in the center of a populous district. But in the populous 
district they could obtain with the same labor as good a 
living from much poorer land, or from land of equal 
quality could make as good a living after paying a high 
rent, because in the midst of a large population their labor 
would have become more effective; not, perhaps, in the pro- 
duction of corn, but in the production of wealth generally 
—or the obtaining of all the commodities and services 
which are the real object of their labor. 

But even where there is a diminution in the productiveness 
of labor at the lowest point—that is to say, where the in- 
creasing demand for wealth has driven production to a lower 
point of natural productiveness than the addition to the 
power of labor from increasing population suffices to make 
up for—it does not follow that the aggregate production, as 
compared with the aggregate labor, has been lessened. 

Let us suppose land of diminishing qualities. The best 
would naturally be setiled first, and as population increased 
production would take in the next lower quality, and so on. 
But, as the increase of population, by permitting greater 
economies, adds to the effectiveness of labor, the cause 
which brought each quality of land successively into 
cultivation would at.the same time increase the amount of 

10 


210 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. ‘Pook LV: 


wealth that the same quantity of labor could produce 
from it. But it would also do more than this—it would in- 
crease the power of producing wealth on all the superior 
lands already in cultivation. If the relations of quantity 
and quality were such that increasing population added to 
the effectiveness of labor faster than it compelled a resort 
to less productive qualities of land, though the margin cf 
cultivation would fall and rent would rise, the minimum 
return to labor would increase. That is to say, though 
wages as a proportion would fall, wages as a quantity would 
rise. The average production of wealth would increase. 
If the relations were such that the increasing effectiveness 
of labor just compensated for the diminishing productive- 
ness of the land as it was called into use, the effect of 
increasing population would be to increase rent by lower- 
ing the margin of cultivation without reducing wages 
as a quantity, and to increase the average production. 
If we now suppose population still increasing, but, be- 
tween the poorest quality of land in use and the next 
lower quality, to be a difference so great, that the increased 
power of labor which comes with the increased population 
that brings it into cultivation, cannot compensate for it—the 
minimum return to labor will be reduced, and with the rise 
of rents, wages will fall, not only as a proportion, but as a 
quantity. But unless the descent in the quality of land is 
far more precipitous than we can well imagine, or than, I 
think, ever exists, the average production will still be in- 
creased, for the increased effectiveness which comes by 
reason of the increased population that compels resort to 
the inferior quality of land, attaches to all labor, and the 
gain on the superior qualities of land will more than com- 
pensate for the diminished production on the quality last 
brought in. The aggregate wealth production, as com- 
pared with the aggregate expenditure of labor, will be 
greater, though its distribution will be more unequal. 
Thus, increase of population, as it operates to extend 
production to lower natural levels, operates to increase rent 
‘and reduce wages as a proportion, and may or may not re- 


Chap. IT. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 211 


duce wages as a quantity; while it seldom can, and probably 
never does, reduce the aggregate production of wealth as 
compared with the aggregate expenditure of labor, but on 
the contrary increases, and frequently largely increases it. 

But while the increase of population thus increases rent 
by lowering the margin of cultivation, it is a mistake to look 
upon this as the only mode by which rent advances as pope 
ulation grows. Increasing population increases rent, with- 
out reducing the margin of cultivation; and notwithstand- 
ing the dicta of such writers as McCulloch, who assert that 
rent would not arise were there an unbounded extent of 
equally good land, increases it without reference to the 
natural qualities of land, for the increased powers of co- 
operation and exchange which come with increased popula- 
tion are equivalent to—nay, I think we can say without 
metaphor, that they give—an increased capacity to land. 

I do not merely mean to say that, hke animprovement in 
the methods or tools of production, the increased power 
which comes with increased population gives to the same 
labor an increased result, which is equivalent to an increase 
in the natural powers of land; but that it brings out a 
superior power in labor, which is localized on land—which 
attaches not to labor generally, but only to labor exerted 
on particular land; and which thus inheres in the land as 
much as any qualities of soil, climate, mineral deposit, or 
natural situation, and passes, as they do, with the pos- 
session of the land. : 

An improvement in the method of cultivation which, 
with the same outlay, will give two crops a year in place 
of one, or an improvement in tools and machinery which, 
will double the result of labor, will manifestly, on a partic- 
ular piece of ground, have the same effect on the produce as 
a doubling of the fertility of the land. But the difference 
is in this respect—the improvement in method or in tools 
can be utilized on any land; but the improvement in fertil- 
ity can only be utilized on the particular land to which it 
applies. Now, in large part, the increased productiveness 
of labor which arises from increased population, can only 


a or 


Fh be EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Booka ke 


be utilized on particular land, and on particular land in 
greatly varying degrees. 

Here, let us imagine, isan unbounded savannah, stretch- 
ing off in unbroken sameness of grass and flower, tree and 
rill, till the traveler tires of the monotony. Along comes 
the wagon of the first immigrant. Where to settle he can- 
not tell—every acre seems as good as every other acre. As 
to wood, as to water, as to fertility, as to situation, there is 
absolutely no choice, and he is perplexed by the embarrass- 
ment of richness. Tired out with the search for one place 
that is better than another, he stops—somewhere, any- 
where—and starts to make himself a home. The soil is 
virgin and rich, game is abundant, the streams flash with 
the finest trout. Nature is at her very best. He has 
what, were he in a populous district, would make him rich; 
but he is very poor. To say nothing of the mental craving, 
which would lead him to welcome the sorriest stranger, he 
labors under all the material disadvantages of solitude. He 
can get no temporary assistance for any work that requires 
a greater union of strength than that afforded by his own 
family, or by such help as he can permanently keep. 
Though he has cattle, he cannot often have fresh meat, for 
to get a beefsteak he must kill a bullock. He must be his 
own blacksmith, wagonmaker, carpenter, and cobbler—in 
short, a ‘‘ jack of all trades and master of none.” He cannot 
have his children schooled, for, to do so, he must himself 
pay and maintain a teacher. Such things as he cannot 
produce himself, he must buy im quantities and keep on 
hand, or else go without, for he cannot be constantly leav- 
ing his work and making a long journey to the verge of 
civilization; and when forced to do so, the getting of a vial 
of medicine or the replacement of a broken auger may cost 
him the labor of himself and horses for days. Under such 
circumstances, though nature is prolific, the man is poor. 
It is an easy matter for him to get enough to eat; but be- 
yond this, his labor will only suffice to satisfy the simplest 
wants in the rudest way. 

Soon there comes another immigrant. Although every 


Chap. II. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 213 


quarter section of the boundless plain is as good as every 
other quarter section, he is not beset by any embarrass- 
ment as to where to settle. Though the land is the same, 
there is one place that is clearly better for him than any 
other place, and that is where there is already a settler and 
he may have a neighbor. He settles by the side of the first 
comer, whose condition is at once greatly improved, and to 
whom many things are now possible that were before im- 
possible, for two men may help each other to do things that 
one man could never do. 

Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same at- 
traction, settles where there are already two. Another, and 
another, until around our first comer there are a score of 
neighbors. Labor has now an effectiveness which, in the 
solitary state, it could not approach. If heavy work is to 
be done, the settlers have a log-rolling, and together ac- 
complish in a day what singly would require years. When 


one kills a bullock, the others take part of it, returning ~ 


when they kill, and thus they have fresh meat all the time. 
Together they hire a schoolmaster, and the children of each 
are taught for a fractional part of what similar teaching 
would have cost the first settler. It becomes a compara- 
tively easy matter to send to the nearest town, for some one 
is always going. But there is less need for such journeys. 
A blacksmith and a wheelwright soon set up shops, and 
our settler can have his tools repaired for a small part of 
the labor it formerly cost him. A store is opened and 
he can get what he wants as he wants it ; a post-office, soon 
added, gives him regular communication with the rest of the 
world. Then come a cobbler, a carpenter, a harnessmaker, 
a doctor ; and a little church soon arises. Satisfactions 
become possible that in the solitary state were impossible. 
There are gratifications for the social and the intellectual 
nature—for that part of the man that rises above the ani- 
mal. The power of sympathy, the sense of companicnship, 
the emulation of comparison and contrast, open a wider, 
and fuller, and more varied life. In rejoicing, there are 
others to rejoice; in sorrow, the mourners do not mourn 


214 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Boot ¥. 


alone. ‘There are husking bees, and apple parings, and 
quilting parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered and 
the orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are yet 
in the strain, and Cupid dances with the dancers. At the 
wedding, there are others to admire and enjoy; in the house 
wf death, there are watchers; by the open grave, stands 
human sympathy to sustain the mourners. Occasionally, 
comes a straggling lecturer to open up glimpses of the 
world of science, of literature, or of art; in election times, 
come stump speakers, and the citizen rises to a sense of dig- 
nity and power, as the cause of empires is tried before him 
in the struggle of John Doe and Richard Roe for his sup- 
port and vote. And, by and by, comes the circus, talked 
of months before, and opening to children whose horizon has 
been the prairie, all the realms of the imagination—princes 
and princesses of fairy tale, mail-clad crusaders and tur- 
baned Moors, Cinderella’s fairy coach, and the giants of 
nursery lore; lions such as crouched before Daniel, or in 
circling Roman amphitheater tore the saints of God; os- 
triches who recall the sandy deserts; camels such as stood 
around when the wicked brethren raised Joseph from the 
well and sold him into bondage; elephants such as crossed 
the Alps with Hannibal, or felt the sword of the Maccabees; 
and glorious music that thrills and builds in the chambers 
of the mind as rose the sunny dome of Kubla Khan. 

Go to our settler now, and say to him: ‘‘ You have so 
many fruit trees which you planted; so much fencing, such 
a well, a barn, a house —in short, you have by your labor 
added so much value to this farm. Your land itself is not 
quite so good. You have been cropping it, and by and by 
it will need manure. I will give you the full value of all 
your improvements if you will give it to me, and go again 
with your family beyond the verge of settlement.” He 
would laugh at you. His land yields no more wheat or 
potatoes than before, but it does yield far more of all the 
necessaries and comforts of life. His labor upon it will 
bring no heavier crops, and, we will suppose, no more valu- 
able crops, but it will bring far more of all the other 


gy 


Chap. 11. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 215 
~ things for which men work. The presence of other settlers— 
the increase of population— has added to the productive- 
ness, in these things, of labor bestowed upon it, and this 
added productiveness gives it a superiority over land of 
equal natural quality where there are as yet no settlers. 
If no land remains to be taken up, except such as is as far 
removed from population as was our settler’s land when he 
first went upon it, the value or rent of this land will be 
measured by the whole of this added capability. If, how- 
ever, as we have supposed, there is a continuous stretch of. 
equal land, over which population is now spreading, it will 
not be necessary for the new settler to go into the wilder- 
ness, as did the first. He will settle just beyond the other 
settlers, and will get the advantage of proximity to them. 
The value or rent of our settler’s land will thus depend on 
the advantage which it has, from being at the center of 
population, over that on the verge. In the one case, the 
margin of production will remain as before; in the other, 
the margin of production will be raised. 

Population still continues to increase, and as it increases 
so do the economies which its increase permits, and which 
in effect add to the productiveness of the iand. Our first 
settler’s land, being the center of population, the store, the 
blacksmith’s forge, the wheelwright’s shop, are set up on 
it, or on its margin, where soon arises a village, which 
rapidly grows into a town, the center of exchanges for the 
people of the whole district. With no greater agricultural 
productiveness than it had at first, this land now begins to 
develop a productiveness of a higher kind. To labor ex- 
pended in raising corn, or wheat, or potatoes, it will yield 
no more of those things than at first; but to labor expended 
in the subdivided branches of production which require 
proximity to other producers, and, especially, to labor ex- 
pended in that final part of production, which consists in 
distribution, it will yield much larger returns. The wheat- 
grower may go further on, and find land on which his 
labor will produce as much wheat, and nearly as much 
wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper, 


216 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 


the professional man, find that their labor expended kere, 
at the center of exchanges, will yield them much more than 
if expended even at a little distance away from it; and this 
excess of productiveness for such purposes the land-owner 
can claim, just as he could an excess in its wheat-producing 
power. And so our settler is able to sellin building lots a few 
of his acres for prices which it would not bring for wheat- 
erowing if its fertility had been multiphed many times. 
With the proceeds, he builds himself a fine house, and 
furnishes it handsomely. That is to say, to reduce the 
transaction to its lowest terms, the people who wish to use 
the land, build and furnish the house for him, on condition 
that he will let them avail themselves of the superior pro- 
ductiveness which the increase of population has given the 
land. 

Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater and 
greater utility to the land, and more and more wealth to 
its owner. The town has grown into a city—a St. Louis, 
a Chicago or a San Francisco—and still it grows. Pro- 
duction is here carried on upon a great scale, with the best 
machinery and the most favorable facilities; the division of 
labor becomes extremely minute, wonderfully multiplying 
efficiency; exchanges are of such volume and rapidity that 
they are made with the minimum of friction and loss. 
Here is the heart, the brain, of the vast social organism 
that has grown up from the germ of the first settlement; 
here has developed one of the great ganglions of the 
human world. Hither run all roads, hither set all currents, 
through all the vast regions round about. Here, if you 
have anything to sell, is the market; here, if you have 
anything to buy, is the largest and the choicest stock. 
Here intellectual activity is gathered into a focus, and here 
springs that stimulus which is born of the collision of mind 
with mind. Here are the great libraries, the storehouses 
and granaries of knowledge, the learned professors, the 
famous specialists. Here are museums and art galleries, 
collections of philosophical apparatus, and all things rare, 
and valuable, and best of their kind. Here come great 


Chap. 11. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 217 


actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the worid. 
Here, in short, is a center of human life, in all its varied 
manifestations. 

So enormous are the advantages which this land now 
offers for the application of labor, that instead of one man 
with a span of horses scratching over acres, you may count 
in places thousands of workers to the acre, working tier on 
tier, on floors raised one above the other, five, six, seven 
and eight stories from the ground, while underneath the 
surface of the earth, engines are throbbing with pulsations 
that exert the force of thousands of horses. 

All these advantages attach to the land; it is on this land 
and no other, that they can be utilized, for here is the center 
of population—the focus of exchanges, the market place and 
workshop of the highest forms of industry. The produc- 
tive powers which Censity of population has attached to 
this land are equivalent to the multiplication of its origi- 
nal fertility by the hundred fold and the thousand fold. 
And rent, which measures the difference between this ad- 
ded productiveness and that of the least productive land 
in use, has increased accordingly. Our settler, or whoever 
has succeeded to his right to the land, is now a millionaire. 
Like another Rip Van Winkle, he may have lain down and 
slept; still he is rich—not from anything he has done, but 
from the increase of population. There are lots from 
which for every foot of frontage the owner may draw more 
than an average mechanic can earn; there are lots that will 
sell for more than would suffice to pave them with gold 
coin. In the principal streets are towering buildings, of 
granite, marble, iron, and plate glass, finished in the most 
expensive style, replete with every convenience. Yet they 
are not worth as much as the land upon which they rest— 
the same land, in nothing changed, which when our first 
settler came upon it had no value at all. 

That this is the way in which the increase of population 
powerfully acts in increasing rent, whoever, in a progress- 
ive country, will look around him, may see for ‘himself. 
The process is going on under his eyes. The increasing 


218 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book LY. 


difference in the productiveness of the land in use, which 
causes an increasing rise 1n rent, results not so much from 
the necessities of increased population compelling the re- 
sort to inferior land, as from the increased productiveness 
which increased population gives to the lands already in | 
use. The most valuable lands on the globe, the lands 
which yield the highest rent, are not lands of- surpassing 
natural fertility, but lands to which a surpassing utility has 
been given by the increase of population. 

The increase of productiveness or utility which increase 
of population gives to certain lands, in the way to which I 
have been calling attention, attaches, as it were, to the 
mere quality of extension. The valuable quality of land 
which has become a center of population is its superficial 
capacity—it makes no difference whether it is fertile, alluvial 
soil like that of Philadelphia; rich bottom land like that of 
New Orleans; a filled in marsh like that of St. Petersburg, 
or a sandy waste like the greater part of San Francisco. 

And where value seems to arise from superior natural 
qualities, such as deep water and good anchorage, rich de- 
posits of coal and iron, or heavy timber, observation also 
shows that these superior qualities are brought out, ren- 
dered tangible, by population. The coal and iron fields 
of Pennsylvania, that to-day are worth enormous sums, 
were fifty years ago valueless. What is the efficient cause 
of the difference? Simply the difference in population. 
The coal and iron beds of Wyoming and Montana, which 
to-day are valueless, will, in fifty years from now, be worth 
millions on millions, simply because, in the meantime, 
population will have greatly increased. 

It is a well provisioned ship, this on which we sail 
through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem 
to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new 
supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great 
command over the services of others comes to those who as 
the hatches are opened are permitted to say, ‘‘ This is 
mine !” , 

To recapitulate: The effect of increasing population upon 


Chap. II. INCREASE OF POPULATION. 219 


the distribution of wealth is to increase rent (and conse- 
quently to diminish the proportion of the produce which 
goes to capital and labor), in two ways: First, By lowering 
the margin of cultivation. Second, By bringing out in 
land special capabilities otherwise latent, and by attaching 
special capabilities to particular lands. 

I am disposed to think that the latter mode, to which | 
little attention has been given by political economists, 1s 
really the more important. But this, in our inquiry, -is 
not a matter of moment. | 


GWA PATER al Le. 


THE EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS UPON THE DISTRE 
BUTION OF WEALTH. 


Eliminating improvements in the arts, we have seen the 
effects of increase of population upon the distribution of 
wealth. Eliminating increase of population, let us now see 
what effect improvements in the arts of production have 
upon distribution. 

We have seen that increase of population increases rent, 
rather by increasing the productiveness of labor than by 
decreasing it. If it can now be shown that, irrespective of 
the increase of population, the effect of improvements in 
methods of production and exchange is to increase rent, 
the disproof of the Malthusian theory—and of all the doc- 
trines derived from or related to it—will be final and com- 
plete, for we shall have accounted for the tendency of 
material progress to lower wages and depress the condition 
of the lowest class, without recourse to the theory of in- 
creasing pressure against the means of subsistence. 

That this is the case will, I think, appear on the slightest 
consideration. 

The effect of inventions and improvements in the produc- 
tive arts, is to save labor—that is, to enable the same result 
to be secured with less labor, or, a greater result with the 
same labor. 

Now, in a state of society in which the existing power of 
Jabor served to satisfy all material desires, and there was 
no possibility of new desires being called forth by the op- | 
portunity of gratifying them, the effect of labor-saving 
improvements would be simply to reduce the amount of 
labor expended. But such a state of society, if it can any- 
where be found (which I do not believe), exists only where 
the human most nearly approaches the animal. In the 


Chap. III. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. DPA k 


state of society called civilized, and which in this inquiry 
we are concerned with, the very reverse is the case. 
Demand is not a fixed quantity, that increases only as pop- 
ulation increases. In each individual it rises with his 
power of getting the things demanded. Man is not an ox, 
who, when he has eaten his fill, lies down to chew the cud; 
he is the daughter of the horse leech, who constantly asks for 
more. ‘‘ When I get some money,” said Erasmus, ‘‘I will 
buy me some Greek books and afterwards some clothes.” 
The amount of wealth produced is nowhere commensurate 
with the desire for wealth, and desire mounts with every 
additional opportunity for gratification. 

This being the case, the effect of labor-saving improve- 
ments will be to increase the production of wealth. Now, 
for the production of wealth, two things are required—labor * 
and land. Therefore, the effect of labor-saving improve- 
ments will be to extend the demand for land, and wherever 
the limit of the quality of land in use is reached, to bring ~ 
into cultivation lands of less natural productiveness, or to 
extend cultivation on the same lands to a‘point of lower 
natural productiveness. And thus, while the primary effect 
of labor-saving improvements is to increase the power of 
labor, the secondary effect is to extend cultivation, and, 
where this lowers the margin of cultivation, to increase 
rent. Thus, where land is entirely appropriated, as in 
England, or where it is either appropriated or is capable 
of appropriation as rapidly as it is needed for use, as in the 
United States, the ultimate effect of labor-saving machinery 
or improvements is to increase rent without increasing 
wages or interest. 

It is important that this be fully understood, for it shows 
that effects attributed by current theories to increase of 
population are really due to the progress of invention, and 
explains the otherwise perplexing fact that labor-saving 
machinery everywhere fails to benefit laborers. 

Yet, to fully grasp this truth, it is necessary to keep in 
mind what I have already more than once adverted to—the 
interchangeability of wealth. I refer to this again, only 


p22 _ EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book 1P. 


because it is so persistently forgotten or ignored by writers 
who speak of agricultural production as though it were to 
be distinguished from production in general, and of food 
or subsistence as though it were not included in the term 
wealth. 

Let me ask the reader to bear in mind, what has already 
been sufficiently illustrated, that the possession or produc- 
tion of any form of wealth is virtually the possession or 
production of any other form of wealth for which it will 
exchange—in order that he may clearly see that it is not 
merely improvements which effect a saving in labor directly 
applied to land that tend to increase rent, but all improve~ 
ments that in any way save labor. 

That the labor of any individual is appled exclusively 
to the production of one form of wealth is solely the result 
of the division of labor. The object of labor on the part 
of any individual is not the obtainment of wealth in one 
particular form, but the obtainment of wealth in all the 
- forms that consort with his desires. And, hence, an im- 
provement which effects a saving in the labor required to 
produce one of the things desired, is, in effect, an increase 
in the power of producing all the other things. If it take 
half a man’s labor to keep him in food, and the other half 
to provide him clothing and shelter, an improvement 
which would increase his power of producing food would 
also increase his power of providing clothing and shelter. 
If his desires for more or better food, and for more or better 
clothing and shelter, were equal, an improvement in one 
department of labor would be precisely equivalent to a like 
improvement in the other. If the improvement consisted 
-in a doubling of the power of his labor in producing food, 
he would give one-third less labor to the production of food, 
and one-third more to the providing of clothing and shel- 
ter. If the improvement doubled his power to provide 
clothing and shelter, he would give one-third less labor 
to the production of these things, and one-third more to 
the production of food. -In either case, the result would 
‘be. the same—he would be enabled with the same labor to 


Chap. IIT. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 223 


get one-third more in quantity or quality of all the things 
he desired. 

And, so, where production is carried on by the division of 
labor between individuals, an increase in the power of pro- 
ducing one of the things sought by production in the 
aggregate, adds to the power of obtaining others, and 
will increase the production of the others, to an extent 
determined by the proportion which the saving of labor 
bears to the total amount of labor expended, and by the 
relative strength of desires. I am unable to think of any 
form of wealth, the demand for which would not be 
increased by a saving in the labor required to produce 
the others. Hearses and coffins have been selected as 
examples of things for which the demand is little likely 
to increase; but this is only true as to quantity. That 
ipcreased power of supply would lead to a demand for 
more expensive hearses and coffins, no one can doubt who 
has noticed how strong is the desire to show regard for the 
dead by costly funerals. 

Nor is the demand for food limited, as in economic 
reasoning is frequently, but erroneously, assumed. Sub- 
sistence is often spoken of as though it were a fixed 
quantity; but it is only fixed as having a definite minimum. 
Less than a certain amount will not keep a human being 
alive, and less than a somewhat larger amount will not keep 
a human being in good health. But, above this ‘minimum, 
the subsistence which a human being can use may be in- 
creased almost indefinitely. Adam Smith says, and Ricardo 
indorses the statement, that the desire for food is limited 
in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; 
but this, manifestly, 1s only true in the sense that when a 
man’s belly is filled, hunger is satisfied. His demands for 
food have no such limit. The stomach of a Louis XIV, a 
Louis XV, or a Louis XVI, could not hold or digest more 
than the stomach of a French peasant of equal stature, 
yet, while a few rods of ground would supply the black 
bread and herbs which constituted the subsistence of the 
peasant, it took hundreds of thousands of acres to supply 


224 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 


the demands of the king, who, besides his own wasteful 
use of the finest qualities of food, required immense sup- 
plies for his servants, horses and dogs. And in the 
common facts of daily life, in the unsatisfied, though per- 
haps latent, desires which each one has, we may see how 
every increase in the power of producing any form of 
wealth must result in an increased demand for land and the 
direct products of land. The man who now uses coarse 
food, and lives in a small house, will,.as arule, if his income 
be increased, use more costly food, and move to a larger 
house. If he grows richer and richer, he will procure 
horses, servants, gardens and lawns, his demand for the 
use of land constantly increasing with his wealth. In the 
city where I write, is a man—but the type of men every- 
where to be found—who used to boil his own beans and fry 
his own bacon, but who, now that he has got rich, main- 
tains a town house that takes up a whole block and would 
answer for a first class hotel, two or three country houses 
with extensive grounds, a large stud of racers, a breeding 
farm, private track, etc., etc. It certainly takes at least a 
thousand times, it may be several thousand times, as much 
land, to supply the demands of this man now, as it did 
_ when he was poor. 

And, so, every improvement or invention, no matter what 
it be, which gives to labor the power of producing more 
wealth, causes an increased demand for land and its direct 
products, and thus tends to force down the margin of cul- 
tivation, just as would the demand caused by an increased 
population. This being the case, every labor-saving inven- 
tion, whether it be a steam plow, a telegraph, an improved 
process of smelting ores, a perfecting printing press, or a 
sewing machine, has a tendency to increase rent, 

Or to state this truth concisely: 


Wealth in all its forms being the product of labor applied to 
land or the products of land, any increase in the power of 
labor, the demand for wealth being unsatisfied, will be utilized 
in procuring more wealth, and thus increase the demand for 
land. 


Chap. III, IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. yi 


To illustrate this effect of labor-saving machinery and 
improvements, let us suppose a country where, as in all the 
countries of the civilized world, the land is in the posses- 
sion of but a portion of the people. Let us suppose a 
permanent barrier fixed to further increase of population, 
either by the enactment and strict enforcement of an Her- 
odian law, or from such a change in manners and morals as 
might result from an extensive circulation of Annie Be- 
sant’s pamphlets. Let the margin of cultivation, or 
production, be represented by 20. Thus land or other 
natural opportunities which, from the application of labor 
and capital, will yield a return of 20, will just give the or- 
dinary rate of wages and interest, without yielding any rent; 
while all lands yielding to equal applications of labor and 
capital more than 20, will yield the excess as rent. Popu- 
lation remaining fixed, let there be made inventions and 
improvements which will reduce by one-tenth the expendi- 
ture of labor and capital necessary to produce the same 
amount of wealth. Now, either one-tenth of the labor and 
capital may be freed, and production remain the same as 
before; or the same amount of labor and capital may be 
employed, and production be correspondingly increased. 
But the industrial organization, as in all civilized countries, 
is such that labor and capital, and especially labor, must 
press for employment on any terms—the industrial organi- 
zation is such that mere laborers are not in a position to 
demand their fair share in the new adjustment, and that any 
reduction in the application of labor to production will, at 
first, at least, take the form, not of giving each laborer the 
same amount of produce for less work, but of throwing 
some of the laborers out of work and giving them none of 
the produce. Now, owing to the increased efliciency of 
labor secured by the new improvements, as great a return 
can be secured at the point of natural productiveness rep- 
resented by 18, as before at 20. Thus, the unsatisfied 
desire for wealth, the competition of labor and capital for 
employment, would insure the extension of the margin of 
production, we will say to 18, and thus rent would be in- 


226 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book LY. 


creased by the difference between 18 and 20, while wages 
and interest, in quantity, would be no more than before, and, 
in proportion to the whole produce, would be less. There 
would be a greater production of wealth, but land owners 
would get the whole benefit (subject to temporary deduc- 
tions, which will be hereafter stated). 

If invention and improvement still go on, the efficiency 
of labor will be still further increased, and the amount of 
labor and capital necessary to produce a given result further 
diminished. The same causes will lead to the utilization of 
this new gain in productive power for the production of 
more wealth; the margin of cultivation will be again ex- 
tended, and rent will increase, both in proportion and 
amount, without any increase in wages and interest. And, 
SO, as invention and improvement go on, constantly add- 
ing to the efficiency of labor, the margin of production 
will be pushed lower and lower, and rent constantly in- 
crease, though population should remain stationary. 

I do not mean to say that the lowering of the margin of 
production would always exactly correspond with the in- 
crease in productive power, any more than I mean to say 
that the process would be one of clearly defined steps. 
Whether, in any particular case, the lowering of the mar- 
gin of production lags behind or exceeds the increase in 
productive power, will depend, I conceive, upon what may 
be called the area of productiveness that can be utilized 
before cultivation is forced to the next lowest point. For 
instance, if the. margin of cultivation be at 20, improve- 
ments which enable the same produce to be obtained with 
one-tenth less capital and labor will not carry the margin 
to 18, if the area having a productiveness of 19 is sufficient 
to employ all the labor and capital displaced from the cul- 
tivation of the superior lands. In this case. the margin of 
cultivation would rest at 19, and rents would be increased 
by the difference between 19 and 20, and wages and inter- 
est by the difference between 18 and 19. But if, with the 
same increase in productive power, the area of productive- 
ness between 20 and 18 should not be sufficient to employ 


Chap. IIT. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 221 


all the displaced labor and capital, the margin of cultiva- 
tion must, if the same amount of labor and capital press 
for employment, be carried lower than 18. In this case, 
rent would gain more than the increase in the product, and 
wages and interest would be less than before the improve- 
ments which increased productive power. 

Nor is it precisely true that the labor set free by each 
improvement will all be driven to seek employment in the 
production of more wealth. The increased power of satis- 
faction, which each fresh improvement gives to a certain 
portion of the community, will be utilized in demanding 
leisure or services, as well as in demanding wealth. Some 
laborers will, therefore, become idlers and some will pass 
from the ranks of productive to those of unproductive labor- 
ers—the proportion of which, as observation shows, tends 
to increase with the progress of society. 

But, as I shall presently refer to a cause, as yet uncon- 
sidered, which constantly tends to lower the margin of 
cultivation, to steady the advance of rent, and even carry it 
beyond the proportion that would be fixed by the actual 
margin of cultivation, it is not worth while to take into 
account these perturbations in the downward movement of 
the margin of cultivation and the upward movement of 
rent. All I wish to make clear is that, without any increase 
in population, the progress of invention constantiy tends to 
give a larger and larger proportion of the produce to the 
owners of land, and a smaller and smaller proportion to 
labor and capital. © 

And, as we can assign no limits to the progress of inven- 
tion, neither can we assign any limits to the increase of 
rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-saving in- 
-yentions went on until perfection was attained, and the 
necessity of labor in the production of wealth was entirely 
done away with, then everything that the earth could yield 
could be obtained without labor, and the margin of culti- 
vation would be extended to zero. Wages would be nothing, 
and interest would be nothing, while rent would take every- 
thing For the owners of the land, being enabled without 


208 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book 3V. 


labor to obtain all the wealth that could be procured from 
nature, there would be no use for either labor or capital, 
and no possible way in which either could compel any share 
of the wealth produced. And no matter how small popula- 
tion might be, if any body but the land owners continued to 
exist, it would be at the whim or by the mercy of the land 
owners—they would be maintained either for the amuses 
ment of the land owners, or, as paupers, by their bounty. 

This point, of the absolute perfection of labor-saving in- 
ventions, may seem very remote, if not impossible of 
attainment; but itis a point towards which the march of 
invention is every day more strongly tending. And in the 
thinning out of population in the agricultural districts of 
Great Britain, where small farms are being converted into 
larger ones, and in the great machine-worked wheat fields 
of California and Dakota, where one may ride for miles 
and miles through waving grain without seeing a human 
habitation, there are already suggestions of the final goal 
towards which the whole civilized world is hastening. The 
steam plow and the reaping machine are creating in the 
modern world latifundia of the same kind that the influx of 
slaves from foreign wars created in ancient Italy. And to 
many a poor fellow as he is shoved out of his accustomed 
place and forced to move on—as the Roman farmers were 
forced to join the proletariat of the great city, or sell their 
blood for bread in the ranks of the legions—it seems as 
though these labor-saving inventions were in themselves a 
curse, and we hear men talking of work, as though the 
wearying strain of the muscles were, in itself, a thing to be 
desired. 

In what has preceded, I have, of course, spoken of inven- 
tions and improvements when generally diffused. It ig 
hardly necessary to say that as long as an invention or an 
improvement is used by so few that they derive a special 
advantage from it, it does not, to the extent of this special 
advantage, affect the general distribution of wealth. So, in 
regard to the limited monopolies created by patent laws, 
or by the causes which give the same character to railroad 


Chap. 111. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ARTS. 229 


and telegraph lines, ete. Although generally mistaken for 
profits of capital, the special profits thus arising are really 
the returns of monopoly, as has been explained in a pre- 
vious chapter, and, to the extent that they subtract from 
the benefits of an improvement, do not primarily affect 
general distribution. For instance, the benefits of a rail- 
road or similar improvement in cheapening transportation 
are diffused or monopolized, as its charges are reduced toa 
rate which will yield ordinary interest on the capital inves- 
ted, or kept up to a point which will yield an extraordinary 
return, or cover the stealing of the constructors or directors. 
And, as is well known, the rise in rent or land values cor- 
responds with the reduction in the charges. 

As has before been said, in the improvements which 
advance rent, are not only to be included the improvements 
which directly increase productive power, but also such 
improvements in government, manners, and morals as - 
indirectly increase it. Considered as material forces, the 
effect of all these is to increase productive power, and, like 
improvements in the productive arts, their benefit is ulti- 
mately monopolized by the possessors of the land. A 
notable instance of this is to be found in the abolition of 
protection by England. Free trade has enormously in- 
creased the.wealth of Great Britain, without lessening 
pauperism. It has simply increased rent. And if the 
corrupt governments of our great American cities were to 
be made models of purity and economy, the effect would 
simply be to increase the value of land, not to raise either 
wages or interest, 


CHAPTER IV. 
EFFECT OF THE EXPECTATION RAISED BY MATERIAL PROGRESS, 


We have now seen that while advancing population tendg 
to advance rent, so all the causes tbat in a progressive state 
of society operate to increase the productive power of labor, 
tend, also, to advance rent, and not to advance wages or 
interest. The increased production of wealth goes ulti- 
mately to the owners of land in increased rent; and, al- 
though, as improvement goes on, advantages may accrue 
to individuals not land holders, which concentrate in their 
hands considerable portions of the increased produce, yet 
there is in all this improvement nothing which tends to in- 
crease the general return either to labor or to capital. 

But there is a cause, not yet adverted to, which must be 
taken into consideration to fully explain the influence of 
material progress upon the distribution of wealth. 

That cause is the confident expectation of the future en- 
hancement of land values, which arises in all progressive 
countries from the steady increase of rent, and which leads 
to speculation, or the holding of land for a higher price 
than it would then otherwise bring. 

We have hitherto assumed, as is generally assumed in 
elucidations of the theory of rent, that the actual margin 
of cultivation always coincides with what may be termed 
the necessary margin of cultivation—thatis to say, we have 
assumed that cultivation extends to less productive points 
only as it becomes necessary from the fact that natural 
opportunities are at the more productive points fully 
utilized. 

This, probably, is the case in stationary or very slowly 
progressing communities, but in rapidly progressing com- 
munities, where the swift and steady increase of rent gives 
confidence to calculations of further increase, it is not the 


Chap. 1, EXPECTATION RAISED BY MATERIAL PROGRESS. yal 


case. In such communities, the confident expectation of 
increased prices produces, to a greater or less extent, the 
effects of a combination among land holders, and tends to 
the withholding of land from use, in expectation of higher 
prices, thus forcing the margin of cultivation farther than 
required by the necessities of production. 

This cause must operate to some extent in all progressive 
communities, though in such countries as England, where 
the tenant system prevails in agriculture, it may be shown 
more in the selling price of land than in the agricultural 
margin of cultivation, or actual rent. But in communities 
like the United States, where the user of land generally 
prefers, if he can, to own it, and where there is a great ex- 
tent of land to overrun, it operates with enormous power. 

The immense area over which the population of the 
United States is scattered shows this. The man who sets 
out from the Hastern seaboard in search of the margin 
of cultivation, where he may obtain land without pay- 
ing rent, must, like the man who swam the river to 
get a drink, pass for long distances through half-tilled 
farms, and traverse vast areas of virgin soil, before he 
reaches the point where land can be had free of rent—. e., 
by homestead entry or pre-emption. He (and, with him, 
the margin of cultivation) is forced so much farther than 
he otherwise need have gone, by the speculation which is 
holding these unused lands in expectation of increased 
value in the future. And when he settles, he will, in his 
turn, take up, if he can, more land than he can use, in the 
belief that it will soon become valuable; and so those who 
follow him are again forced farther on than the necessities 
of production require, carrying the margin of cultivation to 
still less productive, because still more remote points. 

The same thing may be seen in every rapidly growing 
city. If the land of superior quality as to location were 
always fully used before land of inferior quality were 
resorted to, no vacant lots would be left as a city extended, 
nor would we find miserable shanties in the midst of costly 
buildings. These lots, some of them extremely valuable, 


932 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book LY. 


are withheld from use, or from the full use to which they 
might be put, because their owners, not being able or not 
wishing to improve them, prefer, in expectation of the 
advance of land values, to hold them for a higher rate than 
could now be obtained from those willing to improve them. 
And, in consequence of this land being withheld from use, 
or from the full use of which it is capable, the margin of 
the city is pushed away so much farther from the center. 

But when we reach the limits of the growing city—the 
actual margin of building, which corresponds to the margin 
of cultivation in agriculture—we shall not find the land 
purchasable at its value for agricultural purposes, as it 
would be were rent determined simply by present require- 
ments; but we shall find that for a long distance beyond the 
city, land bears a speculative value, based upon the belief 
that it will be required in the future for urban purposes, 
and that to reach the point at which land can be purchased 
at a price not based upon urban rent, we must go very far 
beyond the actual margin of urban use. 

Or, to take another case of a different kind, instances 
- similar to which may doubtless be found in every locality. 
There is in Marin County, within easy access of San Fran- 
cisco, a fine belt of redwood timber. Naturally, this would 
be first used, before resorting for the supply of the San 
Francisco market to timber lands at a much greater dis- 
tance. But it yet remains uncut, and lumber procured 
many miles beyond is daily hauled past it on the railroad, 
because its owner prefers to hold for the greater price it 
will bring in the future. Thus, by the withholding from 
use of this body of timber, the margin of production of 
redwood is forced so much farther up and down the Coast 
Range. That mineral land, when reduced to private owner- 
ship, is frequently withheld from use while poorer deposits 
are worked, is well known, and in new states it is common 
to find individuals who are called ‘‘land poor’’—that is, 
who remain poor, sometimes almost to deprivation, because 
they insist on holding land, which they themselves cannot 
use, at prices at which no one else can profitably use it, 


Chap. 1V. EXPECTATION RAISED BY MATERIAL PROGRESS, 93% 


To recur now to the illustration we made use of in the 
preceding chapter: With the margin of cultivation stand- 
ing at 20, an increase in the power of production takes 
place, which renders the same result obtainable with one- 
tenth less labor. For reasons before stated, the margin of 
production must now be forced down, and if it rests at 18, 
the return to labor and capital will be the same as before, 
when the margin stood at 20. Whether it will be forced 
to 18 or be forced lower depends upon what I have called 
the area of productiveness which intervenes between 20 
and 18. But if the confident expectation of a further 
increase of rents leads the land owners to demand 3 rent 
for 20 land, 2 for 19, and 1 for 18 land, and to withhold 
their land from use until these terms are complied with, 
the area of productiveness may be so reduced that the 
margin of cultivation must fall to 17 or even lower; and 
thus, as the result of the increase in the efficiency of labor, 
laborers would get less than before, while interest would 
be proportionately reduced, and rent would increase in 
greater ratio than the increase in productive power. 

Whether we formulate it as an extension of the margin 
of production, or as a carrying of the rent line beyond the 
margin of production, the influence of speculation in land 
in increasing rent is a great fact which cannot be ignored 
in any complete theory of the distribution of wealth in pro- 
gressive countries. It is the force, evolved by material 
progress, which tends constantly to increase rent in a 
greater ratio than progress increases production, and thus 
constantly tends, as material progress goes on and pro- 
ductive power increases, to reduce wages, not merely rela- 
tively, but absolutely. It is this expansive force which, 
operating with great power in new countries, brings to 
them, seemingly long before their time, the social diseases 
of older countries; produces ‘‘ tramps” on virgin acres, 
and breeds paupers on half-tilled soil. 

In short, the general and steady advance in land values 
in a progressive community necessarily produces that addi- 
tional tendency to advance which is seen in the case of 


934 EFFECTS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. Book IV. 


commodities when any general and continuous cause oper- 
ates to increase their price. As, during the rapid depre- 
ciation of currency which marked the latter days of the 
Southern Confederacy, the fact that whatever was bought 
one day could be sold for a higher price the next, operated 
to carry up the prices of commodities even faster than the 
depreciation of the currency, so does the steady increase of 
land values, which material progress produces, operate to 
still further accelerate the increase. We see this secondary 
cause operating in full force in those manias of land specu- 
lation which mark the growth of new communities; but 
though these are the abnormal and occasional manifesta- 
tions, it is undeniable that the cause steadily operates, with 
greater or less intensity, in all progressive societies. 

The cause which limits speculation in commodities, the 
tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional sup- 
ples, cannot limit the speculative advance in land values, 
as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency can neither 
increase nor diminish; but there is nevertheless a limit to 
the price of land, in the minimum required by labor and 
capital as the condition of engaging in production. If it 
were possible to continuously reduce wages until zero were 
reached, it would be possible to continuously increase rent 
until it swallowed up the whole produce. But as wages 
cannot be permanently reduced below the point at which 
laborers will consent to work and reproduce, nor interest 
below the point at which capital will be devoted to pro- 
duction, there is a limit which restrains the speculative 
advance of rent. I1ence speculation cannot have the same 
scope to advance rent in countries where wages and in- 
terest are already near the minimum, as in countries where 
they are cousiderably above it. Yet that there is in all 
progressive countries a constant tendency in the speculative 
advance of rent to overpass the mit where production 
would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring seasons of 
industrial paralysis—a matter which will be more fully 
examined in the next book. 


ES OOM GaN, 


THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 


CHAPTER I.—THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF RECURRING PAROXYSMS OF IN: 
DUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. 
CHAPTER If.—THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID ADVANCING WEALTH, 


To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong the fruits of it. White 
parasols, and elephants mad with pride are the flowers of a grant of land.—Sir Wm. 
Jones’ translation of an Indian grant of land, found at Tanna. 


The widow is gathering nettles for her children’s dinner; a perfumed seigneur, deli- 
cately lounging in the G&il de Beuf, hath an alchemy whereby he will extract from her 
the third nettle, and call it rent.—Carlyle. 


CET ACP Ter Raul 


» THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF RECURRING PAROXYSMS OF INDUSTRIAL 
DEPRESSION, 


Our long inquiry is ended. We may now marshal the 
results. 

To begin with the industrial depressions, to account for 
which so many contradictory and self-contradictory theories 
are broached. 

A consideration of the manner in which the speculative 
advance in land values cuts down the earnings of labor and 
capital and checks production, leads, I think, irresistibly 
to the conclusion that this is the main cause of those peri- 
odical industrial depressions to which every civilized coun- 
try, and all civilized countries together, seem increasingly 
hable. 

I do not mean to say that there are not other proximate 
causes. The growing complexity and interdependence of 
the machinery of production, which makes each shock or 
stoppage propagate itself through a widening circle; the 
essential defect of currencies which contract when most 
needed, and the tremendous alternations in volume that 
occur in the simpler forms of commercial credit, which, to 
a much greater extent than currency in any form, consti- 
tute the medium or flux of exchanges; the protective tariffs 
which present artificial barriers to the interplay of produc- 
tive forces, and other similar causes, undoubtedly bear 
important part in producing and continuing what are called 
hard times. But, both from the consideration of principles 
and the observation of phenomena, it is clear that the great 
initiatory cause is to be looked for in the speculative 
advance of land values. 

In the preceding chapter I have shown that the specula- 
tive advance in land yalues tends to press the margin of 


238 ‘HE PROBLEM SOLVED. Boa ¥. 


cultivation, or production, beyond its normal limit. thus 
compelling labor and capital to accept of a smaller return, 
or (and this is the only way they can resist the tendency) 
to cease production. Now, it is not only natural that labor 
and capital should resist the crowding down of wages and 
interest by the speculative advance of rent, but they are 
driven to this in self-defense, inasmuch as there is a minix 
mum of return below which labor cannot exist nor capital 
be maintained. Hence, from the fact of speculation in 
land, we may infer all the phenomena which mark these 
recurring seasons of industrial depression. 

Given a progressive community, in which population is 
increasing and one improvement succeeds another, and land 
must constantly increase in value. This steady increase 
naturally leads to speculation in which future increase is 
anticipated, and land values are carried beyond the point 
at which, under the existing conditions of production, their 
accustomed returns would be left to labor and capital. 
Production, therefore, begins to stop. Not that there is 
necessarily, or even probably, an absolute diminution in 
production; but that there is what in a progressive commu- 
nity would be equivalent to an absolute diminution of pro- 
duction in a stationary community—a failure in production 
to increase proportionately, owing to the failure of new 
increments of labor and capital to find employment at the 
accustomed rates. 

This stoppage of production at some points must neces- 
sarily show itself at other points of the industrial network, 
in a cessation of demand, which would again check produc- 
tion there, and thus the paralysis would communicate it- 
self through all the interlacings of industry and commerce, 
producing everywhere a partial disjointing of production 
and exchange, and resulting in the phenomena that seem 
to show over-production or over-consumption, according to 
the standpoint from which they are viewed. 

The period of depression thus ensuing would continue 
until (1) the speculative advance in rents had been lost; or 
(2) the increase in the efficiency of labor owing to the 


o 


Chap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS, 239 


growth of population, and the progress of improvement, 
had enabled the normal rent line to overtake the specula- 
tive rent line; or (3) labor and capital had become recon- 
ciled to engaging in production for smaller returns. Or, 
most probably, all three of these causes would co-operate 
to produce a new equilibrium, at which all the forces of 
production would again engage, and a season of activity 
ensue; whereupon rent would begin to advance again, a 
speculative advance again take place, production again be 
checked, and the same round be gone over. 

In the elaborate and complicated system of production 
which is characteristic of modern civilization, where, more- 
over, there is no such thing as a distinct and independent 
industrial community, but geographically or politically 
separated communities blend and interlace their industria] 
organizations in different modes and varying measures, it 
is not to be expected that effect should be seen to follow 
cause as clearly and definitely as would be the case in a 
simpler development of industry, and in a community 
forming a complete and distinct industrial whole; but, 
nevertheless, the phenomena actually presented by these al- 
ternate seasons of activity and depression clearly correspond 
with those we have inferred from the speculative advance 
of rent. 

Deduction thus shows the actual phenomena as resulting 
from the principle. If we reverse the process, it is as easy 
by induction to reach the principle by tracing up the phe- 
nomena. 

These seasons of depression are always preceded by 
seasons of activity and speculation, and on all hands the 
connection between the two is admitted—the depression 
being looked upon as the reaction from the speculation, as 
the headache of the morning is the reaction from the de- 
bauch of the night. But as to the manner in which the 
depression results from the speculation, there are two classes 
or schools of opinion, as the attempts made on both sides 
of the Atlantic to account for the present industrial de- 
pression will show, 


YAO THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V 


One school says that the speculation produced the 
depression by causing over-production, and point to the 
warehouses filled with goods that cannot be sold at remu- 
nerative prices, to mills closed or working on half time, to 
mines shut down and steamers laid up, to money lying idly 
in bank vaults, and workmen compelled to idleness and pri- 
vation. They point to these facts as showing that the 
production has exceeded the demand for consumption, and 
they point, moreover, to the fact that when government 
during war enters the field as an enormous consumer, brisk 
times prevail, as in the United States during the civil war 
and in England during the Napoleonic struggle. 

The other school says that the speculation has produced 
the depression by leading to over-consumption, and point 
to full warehouses, rusting steamers, closed mills, and idle 
workmen as evidences of a cessation of effective demand, 
which, they say, evidently results from the fact that people, 
made extravagant by a fictitious prosperity, have lived 
beyond their means, and are now obliged to retrench—that 
is, to consume less wealth. They point, moreover, to the 
enormous consumption of wealth by wars, by the building 
of unremunerative railroads, by loans to bankrupt govern- 
ments, etc., as extravagances which, though not felt at the 
time, just as the spendthrift does not at the moment feel 
the impairment of his fortune, must now be made up by a 
season of reduced consumption. 

Now, each of these theories evidently expresses one side 
or phase of a general truth, but each of them evidently fails 
to comprehend the full truth. As an explanation of the 
phenomena, each is equally and utterly preposterous. 

For while the great masses of men want more wealth than 
they can get, and while they are willing to give for it that 
which is the basis and raw material of wealth—their labor—. 
how can there be over-production? And while the ma- 
chinery of production wastes and producers are condemned 
to unwilling idleness, how can there be over-consumption ? 

When, with the desire to consume more, there co-exist the 
ability and willingness to produce more, industrial and 


Cnap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. 241 


commercial paralysis cannot be charged either to over-pro- 
duction or to over-consumption. Manifestly, the trouble is 
that production and consumption cannot meet and satisty 
each other. 

How does this inability arise? It is evidently and by 
common consent the result of speculation. But of specus 
lation in what? 

Certainly not of speculation in things which are the pro- 
ducts of labor—in agricultural or mineral productions, or 
manufactured goods, for the effect of speculation in such 
things, as is well shown in current treatises that spare me 
the necessity of illustration, is simply to equalize supply 
and demand, and to steady the interplay of production and 
consumption by an action analogous to that of a fly-wheel 
in a machine. 

Therefore; if speculation be the cause of these industrial 
depressions, it must be speculation in things not the pro- 
duction of labor, but yet necessary to the exertion of labor 
in the production of wealth-—of things of fixed quantity; 
that is to say, it must be speculation in land. 

[That land speculation is the true cause of industrial de- 
pression is, in the United States, clearly evident. In each 
period of industrial activity land values have steadily risen, 
culminating in speculation which carried them up in great, 
jumps. This has been invariably followed by a partial ces- 
sation of production, and its correlative, a cessation of 
effective demand (dull trade), generally accompanied by a 
commercial crash; and then has succeeded a period of 
comparative stagnation, during which the equilibrium has 
been again slowly established, and the same round been 
run again. This relation is observable throughout the civil- 
ized world. Periods of industrial activity always culminate 
in a speculative advance of land values, followed by symp- 
toms of checked production, generally shown at first by 
cessation of demand from the newer countries, where the 
advance in land values has been greatest. 

That this must be the main explanation of these periods 
of depression, will be seen by an analysis of the facts. 


DAD, THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book Y. 


All trade, let it be remembered, is the exchange of com- 
modities for commodities, and hence the cessation of 
demand for some commodities, which marks the depression 
of trade, is really a cessation in the supply of other com- 
modities. That dealers. find their sales declining and 
manufacturers find orders falling off, while the thines 
which they have to sell, or stand ready to make, are things 
for which there is yet a wide-spread desire, simply shows 
that the supply of other things, which in the course of 
trade would be given for them, has declined. In common 
parlance we say that ‘‘ buyers have no money,” or that 
‘money is becoming scarce,” but in talking in this way we 
ignore the fact that money is but the medium of exchange. 
What the would-be buyers really lack is not money, but 
commodities which they can turn into money—what is 
really becoming scarcer, 1s produce of some sort. The 
diminution of the effective demand of consumers is there- 
fore but a result of the diminution of production. 

This is seen very clearly by storekeepers in a manufac- 
turing town when the mills are shut down and operatives’ 
thrown out of work. It is the cessation of production 
which deprives the operatives of means to make the pur- 
chases they desire, and thus leaves the storekeeper with 
what, in view of the lessened demand, is a superabundant 
stock, and forces him to discharge some of his clerks and 
otherwise reduce his demands. And the cessation of de- 
mand (I am speaking, of course, of general cases and not 
of any alteration in relative demand from such causes as 
change of fashion), which has left the manufacturer with 
superabundant stock and compelled him to discharge his 
hands, must arise in the same way. Somewhere (it may be 
at the other end of the world) a check in production has 
produced a check in the demand for consumption. That 
demand is lessened without want being satisfied, shows that 
production is somewhere checked. 

People want the things the manufacturer makes as much 
as ever, just as the operatives want the things the store- 
keeper has to sell. But they do not have as much to give 


Chap. 1. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. 243 


for them. Production has somewhere been checked, and 
this reduction in the supply of some things has shown itself 
in cessation of demand for others, the check propagating 
itself through the whole framework of industry and ex- 
change. Now, the industrial pyramid manifestly rests on 
the land. The primary and fundamental occupations, 
which create a demand for all others, are evidently those 
which extract wealth from nature, and, hence, if we trace — 
from one exchange point to another, and from one occupa- 
tion to another, this check to production, which shows 
itself in decreased purchasing power, we must ultimately 
find it in some obstacle which checks labor in expending 
itself on land. And that obstacle, it is clear, is the specu- 
lative advance in rent, or the value of land, which produces 
the same effects as (in fact, itis) a lock-out of labor and capi- 
tal by landowners. Thischeck to production, beginning at 
the basis of interlaced industry, propagates itself from 
exchange point to exchange point, cessation of supply be- 
coming failure of demand, until, so to speak, the whole 
machine is thrown out of gear, and the spectacle is every- 
where presented of labor going to waste while laborers 
suffer from want. 

This strange and unnatural spectacle of large numbers 
of willing men who cannot find employment, is enough to 
suggest the true cause to whoever can think consecutively. 
For, though custom has dulled us to it, it is a strange and 
unnatural thing that men who wish to labor, in order to 
satisfy their wants, cannot find the opportunity—as, since 
labor is that which produces wealth, the man who seeks to 
exchange labor for food, clothing, or any other form-of 
wealth, is like one who proposes to give bullion for coin, 
or wheat for flour. We talk about the supply of labor and 
the demand for labor, but, evidently, these are only rela- 
tive terms. The supply of labor is everywhere the same — 
two hands always come into the world with one mouth, 
twenty-one boys to every twenty girls; and the demand for 
labor must always exist as long as men want things which 
labor alone can procure. We talk about the ‘‘ want of 


944. THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Pook i. 


work,” but, evidently it is not work that is short while want 
continues; evidently, the supply of labor cannot be too 
great, nor the demand for labor too small, when people 
suffer for the lack of things that labor produces. The real 
trouble must be that supply 1s somehow prevented from 
satisfying demand, that somewhere there is an obstacle 
_ which prevents labor from producing the things that labor- 
ers want. 

Take the case of any one of these vast masses of unem- 
ployed men, to whom, though he never heard of Malthus, 
it to-day seems that there are too many people in tho 
world. In his own wants, in the needs of his anxious wife, 
in the demands of his half-cared for, perhaps even hungry 
and shivering children, there is demand enough for labor, 
Heaven knows! In his own willing hands is the supply. 
Put him on a solitary island, and though cut off from all 
the enormous advantages which the co-operation, combi- 
nation, and machinery of a civilized community give to the 
productive powers of man, yet his two hands can fill the 
mouths and keep warm the backs that depend upon them. 
Yet where productive power is at its highest development 
they cannot. Why? Is it not because in the one case he 
has access to the material and forces of nature, and in the 
other this access is denied ? 

Is it not the fact that labor is thus shut off from nature 
which can alone explain the state of things that compels 
men to stand idle who would willingly supply their wants 
by their labor? 'The proximate cause of enforced idleness 
with one set of men may be the cessation of demand on the 
part of other men for the particular things they produce, but’ 
trace this cause from point to point, from occupation to oc- 
cupation, and you will find that enforced idleness in one 
trade is caused by enforced idleness in another, and that 
the paralysis which produces dullness in all trades cannot be 
said to spring from too great a supply of labor or too small 
a demand for labor, but must proceed from the fact that 
supply cannot meet demand by producing the things which 
satisfy want and are the object of labor. 


Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. 245 


Now, what is necessary to enable labor to produce these ~ 
things, is land. When we speak of labor creating wealth, 
we speak metaphorically, Man creates nothing, The | 
whole human race, were they to labor forever, could not 
create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam—could not 
make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or one atom 
lighter. In producing wealth, labor, with the aid of nat- 
ural forces, but works up, into the forms desired, pre-exist- 
ing matter, and, to produce wealth, must, therefore, have 
access to this matter and to these forces—that is to say, to 
land. ‘The land is the source of all wealth. It isthe mine 
from which must be drawn the ore that labor fashions. It 
is the substance to which labor gives the form. And, 
hence, when labor cannot satisfy its wants, may we not 
with certainty infer that it can be from no other cause than 
that labor is denied access to land ? 

When in all trades there is what we call scarcity of em- 
ployment; when, everywhere, labor wastes, while desire ig 
unsatisfied, must not the obstacle which prevents labor 
from producing the wealth it needs, lie at the foundation 
of the industrial structure? That foundation is land. 
Milliners, optical instrument makers, gilders, and polish- 
ers, are not the pioneers of new settlements. Miners did 
not go to California or Australia because shoemakers, 
tailors, machinists, and printers were there. But those 
trades followed the miners, just as they are now following 
the gold diggers into the Black Hills and the diamond dig- 
gers into South Africa. It is not the storekeeper who is 
the cause of the farmer, but the farmer who brings the 
storekeeper. It is not the growth of the city that develops 
the country, but the development of the country that makes 
the city grow. And, hence, when, through all trades, men 
willing to work cannot find opportunity to do so, the diffi- 
culty must arise in the employment that creates a demand 
for all other employments—it must be because labor is shut 
out from land. 

In Leeds or Lowell, in Philadelphia or Manchester, in 
London or New York, it may require a grasp of first prin- 


“eww 


246 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


ciples to see this; but where industrial development has 
not become so elaborate, nor the extreme links of the chain 
so widely separated, one has but to look at obvious facts. 
Although not yet thirty years old, the city of San Fran- 
cisco, both in population and in commercial importance, 
ranks among the great cities of the world, and, next to New 
York, is the most metropolitan of American cities. Though 
not yet thirty years old, she has had for some years an ines 
creasing number of unemployed men. Clearly, here, it is 
because men cannot find employment in the country that 
there are so many unemployed in the city; for when the 
harvest opens they go trooping out, and when it is over 
they come trooping back to the city again. If these now 
unemployed men were producing wealth from the land, 
they would not only be employing themselves, but would 
be employing all the mechanics of the city, giving custom 
to the storekeepers, trade to the merchants, audiences 
to the theaters, and subscribers and advertisements to 
the newspapers—creating effective demand that would be 
felt in New England and Old England, and wherever 
throughout the world come the articles that, when they 
have the means to pay for them, such a population con- 
sumes. 

Now, why is it that this unemployed labor cannot em- 
ploy itself upon the land? Not that the land is all in use. 
Though all the symptoms that in older countries are taken 
as showing a redundancy of population are beginning to 
manifest themselves in San Francisco, it is idle to talk of 
redundancy of population in a State that-with greater nat- 
ural resources than France has not yet a million of people. 
Within a few miles of San Francisco is unused land 
enough to give employment to every man who wants it. I 
do not mean to say that every unemployed man could turn 
farmer or build himself a house, if he had the land; but 
that enough could and would do so to give employment to 
the rest. What is it, then, that prevents labor from em- 
ploying itself on this land? Simply, that it has been mon- 
opolized and is held at speculative prices, based not upon 


Chap. T. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. R47 


present value, but upon the added value that will come 
with the future growth of population. 

What may thus be seen in San Francisco by whoever is 
willing to see, may, I doubt not, be seen as clearly in other 
places. 

The present commercial and industrial depression, which 
first clearly manifested itself in the United States in 1872, 
and has spread with greater or less intensity over the civil 
ized world, is largely attributed to the undue extension of 
the railroad system, with which there are many things that 
seem to show its relation. Iam fully conscious that the con- 
struction of railroads before they are actually needed may 
divert capital and labor from more to less productive em- 
ployments, and make a community poorer instead of richer; 
and when the railroad mania was at its highest, I pointed 
this out in a political tract addressed to the people of Cali- 
fornia (The Subsidy Question and the Democratic Party, 
1871); but to assign to this wasting of capital such a wide- 
spread industrial dead-lock seems to me like attributing an 
unusually low tide to the drawing of a few extra bucketfuls 
of water. The waste of capital and labor during the civil 
war was enormously greater than it could possibly be b 
the construction of unnecessary railroads, but without pro- 
ducing any such result. And, certainly, there seems to be 
little sense in talking of the waste of capital and labor in 
railroads as causing this depression, when the prominent 
feature of the depression has been the superabundance of 
capital and labor seeking employment. 

Yet, that there is a connection between the rapid con- 
struction of railroads and industrial depression, any oné 
who understands what increased land values mean, and wha 
has noticed the effect which the construction of railroads 
has upon land speculation, can easily see. Wherever a rail 
road was built or projected, lands sprang up in value under 
the influence of speculation, and thousands of millions of 
dollars were added to the nominal values which capital 
and labor were asked to pay outright, or to pay in install. 
ments, as the price of being allowed to go to work and 


I i 


948 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


produce wealth. The inevitable result was to check pro- 
duction, and this check to production propagated itself in 
a cessation of demand, which checked production to the 
furthest verge of the wide circle of exchanges, operating 
with accumulated force in the centers of the great in- 
dustrial commonwealth into which commerce links the 
civilized world. 

The primary operations of this cause can, perhaps, be 
nowhere more clearly traced than in California, which, 
from its comparative isolation, has constituted a peculiarly 
well defined community. 

Until almost its close, the last decade was marked in 
California by the same industrial activity which was shown 
in the Northern States, and, in fact, throughout the civil- 
ized world, when the interruption of exchanges and the 
disarrangement of industry caused by the war and the 
blockade of Southern ports, is considered. This activity 
could not be attributed to inflation of the currency or to 
lavish expenditures of the General Government, to which 
in the Eastern States the comparative activity of the same 
period has since been attributed; for, in spite of legal 
tender laws, the Pacific Coast adhered to a coin currency, 
and the taxation of the Federal Government took away 
very much more than was returned in Federal expenditures. 
It was attributable solely to normal causes, for, though 
placer mining was declining, the Nevada silver mines were 
being opened, wheat and wool were beginning to take the 
place of gold in the table of exports, and an increasing 
population and the improvement in the methods of produc- 
tion and exchange were steadily adding to the efficiency of 
labor. 

With this material progress went on a steady enhance- 
ment in land values—its consequence. This steady ad- 
vance engendered a speculative advance, which, with the 
railroad era, ran up land values in every direction. If the. 
population of California had steadily grown when the long, 
costly, fever-haunted Isthmus route was the principal 
mode of communication with the Atlantic States, it must, 


Chap. 2. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS, 949 


it was thought, increase enormously with the opening of a 
road which would bring New York harbor and San Fran- 
cisco bay within seven days’ easy travel, and when in the 
State itself the locomotive took the place of stage coach and 
freight wagon. The expected increase of land valves which 
would thus accrue was discounted in advance. Lots on the 
outskirts of San Francisco rose hundreds and thousands 
per cent., and farming land was taken up and held for high 
prices, in whichever direction an immigrant was likely 
to go. 

But the anticipated rush of immigrants did not take 
place. Labor and capital could not pay so much for land 
and make fair returns. Production was checked, if not 
absolutely, at least relatively. As the transcontinental 
railroad approached completion, instead of increased ac- 
tivity symptoms of depression began to manifest them- 
selves; and, when it was completed, to the season of 
activity had succeeded a period of depression which has not 
since been fully recovered from, during which wages and 
interest have steadily fallen. What TI have called the actual 
rent line, or margin of cultivation, is thus (as well as by 
the steady march of improvement and increase of popula- 
tion, which, though slower than it otherwise would have 
been, still goes on) approaching the speculative rent line, 
but the tenacity with which a speculative advance in the 
price of land is maintained in a developing community is 
well known.* 

Now, what thus went on in California went on in every 
progressive section of the Union. Everywhere that a rail- 
road was built or projected, land was monopolized in anti- 
cipation, and the benefit of the improvement was discounted 
in increased land values. The speculative advance in rent 
thus outrunning tho normal advance, production was 
checked, demand was decreased, and labor and capital 


* It is astonishing how in a new country of great exp ctations, speculative prices 
of land will be kept up. It is common to hear the expression, ‘‘There is no mar- 
ket for real estate; you cannot sell it at any price,” and yet, at the same time, if 
you go to buy it, unless you find somebody who is absolutely compelled to sell, 
you must pay the prices that prevailed when speculation ran high. For owners, 
believing that land values must ultimately advance, hold on as long as they can. 


I 


950 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book i 


were turned back from occupations more directly concerned 
with land, to glut those in which the value of land is a less 
perceptible element. It is thus that the rapid extension of 
railroads is related to the succeeding depression. 

And what went on in the United States went on in a 
greater or less obvious degree all over the progressive 
world. Everywhere land values have been steadily in- 
creasing with material progress, and everywhere this 
increasc begot a speculative advance. The impulse of the 
primary cause not only radiated from the newer sections of 
the Union to the older sections, and from the United States 
to Europe, but everywhere the primary cause was acting. 
And, hence, a world-wide depression of industry and com- 
merce, begotten of a world-wide material progress. 

There is one thing which, it may seem, I have over- 
looked, in attributing these industrial depressions to the 
speculative advance of rent or land values as a main and 
primary cause. The operation of such a cause, though it 
may be rapid, must be progressive—resembling a pressure, 
not a blow. But these industrial depressions seem to come 
suddenly—they have, at their beginning, the character of 
a paroxysm, followed by a comparative lethargy, as if of 
exhaustion. Everything seems to be going on as usual, 
commerce and industry vigorous and expanding, when 
suddenly there comes a shock, as of a thunderbolt out of a 
clear sky—a bank breaks, a great manufacturer or mer- 
chant fails, and, as if a blow had thrilled through the entire 
industrial organization, failure succeeds failure, and on 
every side workmen are discharged from employment, and 
capital shrinks into profitless security. 

Let me explain what I think to be the reason of this: To 
do so, we must take into account the manner in which exe 
changes are made, for it is by exchanges that all the varied 
forms of industry are linked together into one mutually 
related and interdependent organization. ‘To enable ex- 
changes to be made between producers far removed by 
space and time, large stocks must be kept in store and in 
transit, and this, as I have already explained, I take to be 


Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. 251 


the great function of capital, in addition to that of supply- 
ing tools and seed. These exchanges are, perhaps neces- 
sarily, largely made upon credit—that is to say, the ad- 
vance upon one side is made before the return is received 
on the other. 

Now, without stopping to inquire as to the causes, it is 
manifest that these advances are, as a rule, from the more 
highly organized and later developed industries to the 
more fundamental. The West Coast African, for instance, 
who exchanges palm oil and cocoanuts for gaudy calico 
and Birmingham idols, gets his return immediately; the 
English merchant, on the contrary, has to lay out of his 
goods a long while before he gets his returns. The farmer 
can sell his crop as soon as it is harvested, and for cash; the 
ereat manufacturer must keep a large stock, send his goods 
long distances to agents, and, generally, sell on time. 
Thus, as advances and credits are generally from what we 
may call the secondary, to what we may call the primary 
industries, it follows that any check to production which 
proceeds from the latter, will not immediately manifest 
itself in the former. The system of advances and credits 
constitutes, as it were, an elastic connection, which will 
give considerably before breaking, but which, when it 
breaks, will break with a snap. | 

Or, to illustrate in another way what I mean: The great 
pyramid of Gizah is composed of layers of masonry, the 
bottom layer, of course, supporting all the rest. Could we 
by some means gradually contract this bottom layer, the 
upper part of the pyramid would for some time retain its 
form, and then, when gravitation at length overcame the 
adhesiveness of the material, would not diminish gradu- 
ally and regularly, but would break off suddenly, in large 
pieces. Now, the industrial organization may be likened 
to such a pyramid. What is the proportion which in a 
given stage of social development the various industries 
bear to each other, it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, 
to say; but itis obvious that there is such a proportion, 
just as in a printer’s font of type there is a certain propor- 


952, THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


tion between the various letters. Each form of industry, as 
it is developed by division of labor, springs from and rises 
out of the others, and all rest ultimately upon land; for, 
without land, labor is as impotent as would be a man in 
void space. To make the illustration closer to the condi- 
tion of a progressive country, imagine a pyramid composed 
of superimposed layers—the whole constantly growing and 
expanding. Imagine the growth of the layer nearest the 
ground to be checked. The others will for a time keep on 
expanding—in fact. for the moment, the tendency will be 
to quicker expansion, for the vital force which is refused 
scope on the ground layer will strive to find vent in those 
above—until, at length, there is a decided overbalance and 
a sudden crumbling along all the faces of the pyramid. 

That the main cause and general course of the recurring 
paroxysms of industrial depression, which are becoming so 
marked a feature of modern social life, are thus explained, 
is, I think, clear. And let the reader remember that it is 
only the main causes and general courses of such phenom- 
ena that we are seeking to trace or that, in fact, it 1s \pos- 
sible to trace with any exactness. Political economy \can 
only deal, and has only need to deal, with general tenden- 
cies. The derivative forces are so multiform, the actions 
and reactions are so various, that the exact character of the 
phenomena cannot be predicted. We know that if a tree 
is cut through it will fall, but precisely in what direction 
will be determined by the inclination of the trunk, the 
spread of the branches, the impact of the blows, the quarter 
and force of the wind; and even a bird lighting on a twig, 
or a frightened squirrel leaping from bough to bough, will 
not be without its influence. We know that an insult will 
arouse a feeling of resentment in the human breast, but to 
say how far and in what way it will manifest itself, would 
require a synthesis which would build up the entire man 
and all his surroundings, past and present. 

The manner in which the sufficient cause to which I have 
traced them explains the main features of these industrial 
depressions, is in striking contrast with the contradictory 


Chap. I. CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS. 2538 


and self-contradictory attempts which have been made to 
explain them on the current theories of the distribution of 
wealth. That a speculative advance in rent or land values 
invariably precedes each of these seasons of industrial de- 
pression is everywhere clear. That they bear to each other 
the relations of cause and effect, is obvious to whoever con- 
siders the necessary relations between land and labor. 

And that the present depression is running its course, 
and that, in the manner previously indicated, a new equilib- 
rium is being established, which will result in another season 
of comparative activity, may already be seen in the United 
States. The normal rent line and the speculative rent line 
are being brought together: (1) By the fall in speculative v 
land values, which is very evident in the reduction of rents 
and shrinkage of real estate values in the principal cities. 
(2) By the increased efficiency of labor, arising from the 
growth of population and the utilization of new inventions 
and discoveries, some of which almost as important as that of 
the use of steam we seem to be on the verge of grasping. 
(3) By the lowering of the habitual standard of interest and 
wages, which, as to interest, is shown by the negotiation 
of a government loan at four per cent., and as to wages is 
too generally evident for any special citation. When the 
equilibrium is thus re-established, a season of renewed 
activity, culminating in a speculative advance of land values 
will set in.* But wages and interest will not recover their 
lost ground. The net result of all these perturbations or 
wave-like movements is the gradual forcing of wages and 
interest towards their minimum. These temporary and re- 
curring depressions exhibit, in fact, as was noticed in the 
opening chapter, but intensifications of the general move- 
ment which accompanies material progress. 


* This was written a yearago. It is now (July, 1879) evident that a new period of 
activity has commenced, as above predicted, and in New York and Chicage real estate 
prices have already begun to recover, 


CHAPTER II. 
THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY AMID ADVANCING WEALTH. 


The great problem, of which these recurring seasons of 
industrial depression are but peculiar manifestations, is 
now, I think, fully solved, and the social phenomena 
which all over the civilized world appall the philanthropist 
and perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds the 
future of the most advanced races, and suggest doubts of 
the reality and ultimate goal of what we have fondly called 
progress, are now explained. 


The reason why, in spite of the increase of productive 
power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which will give 
but a bare living, is that, with increase in productive power, 
rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a constant 
tendency to the forcing down of wages. 


In every direction, the direct tendency of advancing civil- 
ization is to increase the power of human labor to satisfy 
human desires—to extirpate poverty, and to banish want 
and the fear of want. All the things in which progress 
consists, all the conditions which progressive communities 
are striving for, have for their direct and natural result the 
improvement of the material (and consequently the intel- 
lectual and moral) condition of all within their influence. 
The growth of population, the increase and extension of 
exchanges, the discoveries of science, the march of inven- 
tion, the spread of education, the improvement of govern- 
ment, and the amelioration of manners, considered as 
material forces, have all a direct tendency to increase the 
productive power of labor—not of some labor, but of all 
labor; not in some departments of industry, but in all de- 
partments of industry; for the law of the production of 
wealth in society is the law of ‘‘each for all, and all for 
each.” 


Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 255 


But labor cannot reap the benefits which advancing civil- 
ization thus brings, because they are intercepted. Land 
being necessary to labor, and being reduced to private 
ownership, every increase in the productive power of labor 
but increases rent—the price that labor must pay for the 
opportunity to utilize its powers; and thusall the advantages 
gained by the march of progress go to the owners of land, 
and wages do not increase. Wages cannot increase; for 
the greater the earnings of labor the greater the price that 
labor must pay out of its earnings for the opportunity to 
make any earnings at all. The mere laborer has thus no 
more interest in the general advance of productive power 
than the Cuban slave has in advance in the price of sugar. 
And just as an advance in the price of sugar may make the 
condition of the slave worse, by inducing the master to 
drive him harder, so may the condition of the free laborer 
be positively, as well as relatively, changed for the worse 
by the increase in the productive power of hislabor. For, 
begotten of the continuous advance of rents, arises a spec- 
ulative tendency which discounts the effect of future 
improvements by a still further advance of rent, and thus 
tends, where this has not occurred from the normal ad- 
vance of rent, to drive wages down to the slave point—the 
point at which the laborer can just live. 

And thus robbed of all the benefits of the increase in 
productive power, labor is exposed to certain effects of ad- 
vancing civilization which, without the advantages that 
naturally accompany them, are positive evils, and of them- 
selves tend to reduce the free laborer to the helpless and 
degraded condition of the slave. 

For all the improvements which add to productive power 
as civilization advances, consist in, or necessitate, a still 
further subdivision of labor, and the efficiency of the whole 
body of laborers is increased at the expense of the inde- 
pendence of the constituents. The individual laborer 
acquires knowledge of, and skill in, but an infinitesimai 
part of the varied processes which are required to supply 
even the commonest wants. The aggregate produce cf the 


256 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. - 


labor of a savage tribe is small, but each member is capa- 
ble of an independent life. He can build his own 
habitation, hew out or stitch together his own canoe, make 
his own clothing, manufacture his own weapons, snares, 
tools and ornaments. He has all the knowledge of nature 
possessed by his tribe—knows what vegetable productions 
are fit for food, and where they may be found; knows 
the habits and resorts of beasts, birds, fishes, and insects; 
can pilot himself by the sun or the stars, by the turning . 
of blossoms or the mosses on.the trees; is, in short, 
capable of supplying all his wants. He may be cut off 
from his fellows and still live; and thus possesses an inde- 
pendent power which makes him a free contracting party 
in his relations to the community of which he is a member. 

Compare with this savage the laborer in the lowest ranks 
of civilized society, whose life is spent in producing but 
one thing, or oftener but the infinitesimal part of one thing, 
out of the multiplicity of things that constitute the wealth 
of- society and go to supply even the most primitive 
wants; who not only cannot make even the tools required 
for his work, but often works with tools that he does not 
own, and can never hope to own. Compelled.to even 
closer and more continuous labor than the savage, and 
gaining by it no more than the savage gets—the mere 
necessaries of life—he loses the independence of the savage. 
He is not only unable to apply his own powers to the direct 
satisfaction of his own wants, but, without the concurrence 
of many others, he is unable to apply them indirectly to 
the satisfaction of his wants. He is a mere link in an 
enormous chain of producers and consumers, helpless to 
separate himself, and helpless to move, except as they 
move. ‘The worse his position in society, the more depend- 
ent is he on society; the more utterly unable does he 
become to do anything for himself. The very power of ex- 
erting his labor for the satisfaction of his wants passes from 
his own control, and may be taken away or restored by the 
actions of others, or by general causes over which he has 
no more influence than he has over the motions of the solar 


Chap. IT. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. O57 


system. The primeval curse comes to be looked upon as a 
boon, and men think, and talk, and clamor, and legislate as 
though monotonous manual labor in itself were a good 
and not an evil, an end and nota means. Under such cir- 
cumstances, the man loses the essential quality of manhood 
—the godlike power of modifying and controlling condi- 
tions. He becomes a slave, a machine, a commodity—a 
thing, in some respects, lower than the animal. 

Iam no sentimental admirer of the savage state. I do 
not get my ideas of the untutored children of nature from 
Rousseau, or Chateaubriand or Cooper. I am conscious of 
its material and mental poverty, and its low and narrow 
range. I believe that civilization is not only the natural 
destiny of man, but the enfranchisement, elevation, and re- 
finement of ali his powers, and think that it is only in such 
moods as may lead him to envy the cud-chewing cattle, that 
a man who is free to the advantages of civilization could 
look with regret upon the savage state. But, nevertheless, 
I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts, can re- 
sist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our 
civilization large classes with whom the veriest savage could 
not afford to exchange. It is my deliberate opinion that if, 
standing on the threshhold of being, one were given the 
choice of entering life as a Terra del Fuegan, a black fel- 
low of Australia, an Esquimaux in the Arctic Circle, or 
among the lowest classes in such a highly civilized country 
as Great Britain, he would make infinitely the better choice 
in selecting the lot of the savage. For those classes who 
in the midst of wealth are condemned to want, suffer all 
the privations of the savage, without his sense of personal 
freedom; they are condemned to more than his narrowness 
and littleness, without opportunity for the growth of his 
rude virtues; if their horizon is wider, it is but to reveal 
blessings that they cannot enjoy. 

There are some to whom this may seem like exaggeration, 
but it is only because they have never suffered themselves 
to realize the true condition of those classes upon whom the 
iron heel of modern civilization presses with full force. 

12 


258 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


As De Tocqueville observes, in one of his letters to Mme. 
Swetchine, “we so soon become used to the thought of want 
that we do not feel, that an evil which grows greater to the 
- sufferer the longer it lasts becomes less to the observer by 
the very fact of its duration; and perhaps the best proof 
of the justice of this observation is that in cities where 
there exists a pauper class and a criminal class, where 
young girls shiver as they sew for bread, and tattered and 
bare-footed children’ make a home in the streets, money is 
regularly raised to send missionaries to the heathen! Send 
missionaries to the heathen! it would be laughable if 
it were not so sad. Baal no longer stretches forth his hide- 
ous, sloping arms; but in Christian lands mothers slay 
their infants for a burial fee! And I challenge the produc- 
tion from any authentic accounts of savage life of such 
descriptions of degradation as are to be found in official 
documents of highly civilized countries—in reports of Sani- 
tary Commissioners and of inquiries into the condition of 
the laboring poor. 

The simple theory which I have outlined (if indeed it 
can be called a theory which is but the recognition of the 
most obvious relations) explains this conjunction of poverty 
with wealth, of low wages with high productive power, of 
degradation amid enlightenment, of virtual slavery in polit- 
ical liberty. It harmonizes, as results flowing from a 
general and inexorable law, facts otherwise most perplex- 
ing, and exhibits the sequence and relation between phe- 
nomena that without reference to it are diverse and contra- 
dictory, It explains why interest and wages are higher in 
new than in older communities, though the average, as 
well as the aggregate, production of wealth is less. It ex- 
plains why improvements which increase the productive 
power of labor and capital, increase the reward of neither, 
It explains what is commonly called the conflict between 
labor and capital, while proving the real harmony of inter- 
est between them. It cuts the last inch of ground from 
under the fallacies of protection, while showing why free 
trade fails to permanently benefit the working classes. It 


Chap. 11. (HE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 259 


explains why want increases with abundance, and wealth 
tends to greater and greater aggregations. It explains the 
periodically recurring depressions of industry without re- 
course either to the absurdity of ‘‘ over-production” or the 
absurdity of ‘‘ over-consumption.” It explains the enforced 
idleness of large numbers of would-be producers, which 
wastes the productive force of advanced communities, 
without the absurd assumption that there is too little work 
to do, or that there are too many to do it. It explains the 
ill effects upon the laboring classes which often follow the 
introduction of machinery, without denying the natural 
advantages which the use of machinery gives. It explains 
the vice and misery which show themselves amid dense 
population, without attributing to the laws of the All-Wise 
and All-Beneficent defects which belong only to the short- 
sighted and selfish enactments of men. 

This explanation is in accordance with all the facts. 

Look over the world to-day. In countries the most widely 
differing—under conditions the most diverse as to govern- 
ment, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to currency—you will 
find distress among the working classes; but everywhere that 
you thus find distress and destitution in the midst of wealth, 
you will find that the land is monopolized; that instead of 
being treated as the common property of the whole people, 
it is treated as the private property of individuals; that, 
for its use by labor, large revenues are extorted from the 
earnings of labor. Look over the world to-day, comparing 
different countries with each other, and you will see that itis 
not the abundance of capital or the productiveness of labor 
that makes wages high or low; but the extent to which the 
monopolizers of land can, in rent, levy tribute upon the 
earnings of labor, Is it not a notorious fact, known to the 
most ignorant, that new countries, where the aggregate 
wealth is small, but where land is cheap, are always better 
countries for the laboring classes than the rich countries, 
where landis dear? Wherever you find land relatively low, 
will you not find wages relatively high? And wherever 
land is high, will you not find wages low? As land in-_ 


260 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


creases in Value, poverty deepens and pauperism appears. 
In the new settlements, where land is cheap, you will find 
no beggars, and the inequalities in condition are very slight. 
In the great cities, where land is so valuable that it is 
measured by the foot, you will find the extremes of poverty 
and of luxury. And this disparity in condition between 
the two extremes of the social scale may always be meas- 
ured by the price of land. Land in New York is more 
valuable than in San Francisco; and in New York, the San 
Franciscan may see squalor and misery that will make him 
stand aghast. Land is more valuable in London than in 
New York; and in London, there is squalor and destitution 
worse than that of New York. 

Compare the same country in different times, and the 
same relation is obvious. As the result of much investi- 
gation, Hallam says he is convinced that the wages of 
manual labor were greater in amount in England during 
the middle ages than they are now. Whether this is so 
or not, it is evident that they could not have been much, if 
any, less. ‘The enormous increase in the efficiency of labor, 
which even in agriculture is estimated at seven or eight 
hundred per cent., and in many branches of industry is 
almost incalculable, has only added to rent. The rent of 
agricultural land in England is now, according to Professor 
Rogers, 120 times as great, measured in money, as it was 
500 years ago, and 14 times as great, measured in wheat; 
while in the rent of building land, and mineral land, the 
advance has been enormously greater. According to the 
estimate of Professor Fawcett, the capitalized rental value 
of the land of England now amounts to £4,500,000,000, or 
$21,870,000,000—that is to say, a few thousand of the 
people of England hold a len upon the labor of the rest, 
the capitalized value of which is more than twice as great 
as, at the average price of Southern negroes in 1860, 
would be the value of the whole population were they 
slaves. 

In Belgium and Flanders, in France and Germany, the 
rent and selling price of agricultural land have doubled 


Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 261 


within the last thirty years.* In short, increased power of 
production has everywhere added to the value of land;_ 
nowhere has it added to the value of labor; for though ac- 
tual wages may in some places have somewhat risen, the 
rise is clearly attributable to other causes. In more places 
they have fallen—that is where it has been possible for 
them to fall—for there is a minimum below which laborers 
cannot keep up their numbers. And, everywhere, wages, 
as a proportion of the produce, have decreased. 

How the Black Death brought about the great rise of 
wages in England in the Fourteenth Century is clearly dis- 
cernible, in the efforts of the land holders to regulate 
wages by statute. That that awful reduction in population, 
instead of increasing, really reduced the effective power of 
labor, there can be no doubt; but the lessening of competi- 
tion for land still more greatly reduced rent, and wages 
advanced so largely that force and penal laws were called 
in to keep them down. The reverse effect followed the 
monopolization of land that went on in England during 
the reign of Henry VIII, in the enclosure of commons and 
the division of the church lands between the panders and 
parasites who were thus enabled to found noble families. 
The result was the same as that to which a speculative in- 
crease in land values tends. According to Malthus (who, 
in his ‘‘ Principles of Political Economy,” mentions the fact 
without connecting it with land tenures), in the reign of 
Henry VII, half a bushel of wheat would purchase but 
httle more than a day’s common labor, but in the latter 
part of the reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat 
would purchase three days’ common labor. I can hardly 
believe that the reduction in wages could have been so 
great as this comparison would indicate; but that there was 
a reduction in common wages, and great distress among the 
laboring classes, is evident from the complaints of ‘‘ sturdy 
vagrants” and the statutes made to suppress them. ‘Lhe 
rapid monopolization of the land, the carrying of the 


* Systems of Land Tenure, published by the Cobden Club, 


262 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V’. 


speculative rent line beyond the normal rent line, produced 
tramps and paupers, just as lke effects from like causes 
have lately been evident in the United States. 

‘*Land which went heretofore for twenty or forty pounds 
a year,’ said Hugh Latimer, ‘‘now is let for fifty or a 
hundred. My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of 
his own; only he had a farm at a rent of three or four 
pounds by the year at the uttermost, and thereupon he 
tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for 
a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine; he 
was able and did find the King a harness with himself and 
his horse when he came to the place that be should receive 
the King’s wages. I can remember that I buckled his 
harness when he went to Blackheath Field. He kept me to 
school; he married my sisters with five pound a piece, so 
that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. 
He kept hospitality for his neighbors and some alms he 
gave to the poor. And all this he did of the same farm, 
where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds rent or 
more by year, and is not able to do anything for his Prince, 
for himself, nor for his children, nor to give a cup of drink 
to the poor.” 

‘‘In this way,” said Sir Thomas More, referring to the 
ejectment of small farmers which characterized this ad- 
vance of rent, ‘‘it comes to pass that these poor wretches, 
men, women, husbands, orphans, widows, parents with 
little children, householders greater in number than in 
wealth, all of these emigrate from their native fields, with- 
out knowing where to go.” 

And so from the stuff of the Latimers and Mores—from 
the sturdy spirit that amid the flames of the Oxford stake 
cried, ‘‘ Play the man, Master Ridley!” and the mingled 
strength and sweetness that neither prosperity could taint 
nor the axe of the executioner abash—were evolved thieves 
and vagrants, the mass of criminality and pauperism that 
still blights the innermost petals and preys a guawing 
werm at the root of England’s rose. 

But it were as well to cite historical illustrations of 


Chap. II. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 263 


the attraction of gravitation. The principle is as universal 
and as obvious. That rent must reduce wages, is as clear 
as that the greater the subtractor the less the remainder. 
That rent does reduce wages, any one, wherever situated, 
can see by merely looking around him. 

There is no mystery as to the cause which so suddenly 
and so largely raised wages in California in 1849, and in 
Australia in 1852. It was the discovery of the placer mines 
in unappropriated land to which labor was free that raised 
the wages of cooks in San Francisco restaurants to $500 
a month, and left ships to rot in the harbor without 
officers or crew until their owners would consent to pay 
rates that in any other part of the globe seemed fabulous. 
Had these mines been on appropriated land, or had they 
been immediately monopolized so that rent could have 
arisen, it would have been land values that would have 
leaped upward, not wages. The Comstock lode has been 
richer than the placers, but the Comstock lode was readily 
monopolized, and it is only by virtue of the strong organi- 
zation of the Miners’ Association and the fears of the 
damage which it might do, that enables men to get four 
dollars a day for parboiling themselves two thousand 
feet underground, where the air that they breathe must be 
pumped down to them. The wealth of the Comstock lode 
has added to rent. The selling price of these mines runs 
up into hundreds of millions, and it has produced individ- 
ual fortunes whose monthly returns can only be estimated 
in hundreds of thousands, if not in millions. Nor is there 
any mystery about the cause which has operated to reduce 
wages in California from the maximum of the early days to 
very nearly a level with wages in the Eastern States, and 
that is still operating to reduce them. The productiveness 
of labor has not decreased, on the contrary it has increased, 
as 1 have before shown; but, out of what it produces, labor 
has now to pay rent. As the placer deposits were exhaust- 
ed, labor had to resort to the deeper mines and to 
agricultural land, but monopolization of these being per- 
mitted, men now walk the streets of San Francisco ready 


264 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V. 


to go to work for almost anything—for natural opportuni- 
ties are now no longer free to labor. 

The truth is self-evident. Put to any one capable of 
consecutive thought this question: 

‘‘Suppose there should arise from the English Channel 
or the German Ocean a No-man’s land on which common 
labor to an unlimited amount should be able to make ten 
shillings a day and which should remain unappropriated 
and of free access, like the commons which once comprised 
so large a part of English soil. What would be the effect 
upon wages in England ?” 

He would at once tell you that common wages through- 
out England must soon increase to ten shillings a day. 

And in response to another question, ‘‘ What would be 
the effect on rents?’ he would at a moment’s reflection say 
that rents must necessarily fall; and if he thought out the 
next step he would tell you that all this would happen 
without any very large part of English labor being diverted 
to the new natural opportunities, or the forms and direc- 
tion of industry being much changed; only that kind of 
production being abandoned which now yields to labor 
and to landlord together less than labor could secure on 
the new opportunities. The great rise in wages would be 
‘at the expense of rent. 

Take now the same man or another—some hard-headed 
business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make 
money. Say to him: ‘ Here is a little village; in ten years 
it will be a great city—in ten years the railroad will have 
taken the place of the stage-coach, the electric light of 
the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and im- 
provements that so enormously multiply the effective power 
of labor. Will, in ten years, interest be any higher ?” 

He will tell you, ‘‘ No!” 

‘* Will the wages of common labor be any higher; will it 
be easier for a man who has nothing but his labor to make 
an independent living ?”’ 

He will tell you, ‘‘ No; the wages of common labor will 
not be any higher; on the contrary, all the chances are 


Chap. 11. THE PERSISTENCE OF POVERTY. 265 


that they will be lower; it will not be easier for the mere 
laborer to make an independent living: the chances are 
that it will be harder.” 

‘* What, then, will be higher ?”’ 

‘** Rent; the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of 
ground, and hold possession.”’ 

And if, under such circumstances, you take his advice, 
you need do nothing more. You may sit down and smoke 
your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples 
or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon, or 
down a hole in the ground; and without doing one stroke 
of work, without adding one iota to the wealth of the 
community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city 
you may have a luxurious mansion; but among its public 
buildings will be an almshouse. 

In all our long investigation we have been advancing to 
this simple truth: That as land is necessary to the exertion 
of labor in the production uf wealth, to command the land 
which is necessary to labor, is to command all the fruits of * 
labor save enough to enable labor to exist. We have been 
advancing as through an enemy’s country, in which every 
step must be secured, every position fortified, and every 
by-path explored; for this simple truth, in its application 
to social and political problems, is hid from the great 
masses of men partly by its very simplicity, and in greater 
part by wide-spread fallacies and erroneous habits of 
thought which lead them to look in every direction but the 
right one for an explanation of the evils which oppress and 
threaten the civilized world. And back of these elaborate 
fallacies and misleading theories, is an active, energetic 
power, a power that in every country, be its political forms 
what they may, writes laws and molds thought—the power 
of a vast and dominant pecuniary interest. 

But so simple and so clear is this truth, that to fully see 
it once is always to recognize it. There are pictures which, 
though looked at again and again, present only a confused 
labyrinth of lines or scroll work—a landscape, trees, or 
something of the kind—until once the attention is called ta 


| 


266 THE PROBLEM SOLVED. Book V’. 


the fact that these things make up a face or afigure. This 
relation once recognized, is always afterwards clear. It is 
so in this case. In the lght of this truth all social facts 
group themselves in an orderly relation, and the most 
diverse phenomena are seen to spring from one great prin- 
ciple. It is notin the relations of capital and labor; it is 
not in the pressure of population against subsistence, that 
an explanation of the unequal development of our civiliza- 
tion is to be found. The great cause of inequality in the 
distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of 
land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental 
fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, 
and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a 
people. And it must be so. For land is the habitation of 
man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for all his 
needs, the material to which his labor must be applied for 
the supply of all his desires; for even the products of the 
sea cannot be taken, the light of the sun enjoyed, or any of 
the forces of nature utilized, without the use of land or its 
products. On the land we are born, from it we live, to it 
we return again—children of the soil as truly as is the 
blade of grass or the flower of the field. Take away from 
man all that belongs to land, and he is but a disembodied 
spirit. Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence 


upon land; it can but add to the power of producing wealth _ | 


from land; and hence, when land is monopolized, it might* 
go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving the 
condition of those who have but their labor. It can but 
add to the value of land and the power which its possession 
gives. Everywhere, in all times, among all peoples, the 
possession of land is the base of aristocracy, the founda- 
tion of great fortunes, the source of power. As said the 
Brahmins, ages ago— 

‘* To whomsoever the soil at any time belongs, to him belong 
the fruits of it. White parasols and elephants mad with pride 
are the flowers of a grant of land.” 


‘ 


o~ 
y 
\s 
oe 


awn 


? 


BO Ora avail. 


THE REMEDY. 


——— 


CHAPTER I.—INSUFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY ADVOCATED 
CHAPTER II.—THE TRUE REMEDY. 


A new and fair division of the goods and rights of this world should be the main ob- 
ject of those who conduct human affairs.—De Tocqueville. 


When the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means do not 
merely produce small effects; they produce no effect at all_—John Stuart Mill. 


CHAPTER I. 
INEFFICIENCY OF REMEDIES CURRENTLY ADVOCATED. 


In tracing to its source the cause of increasing poverty 
amid advancing wealth, we have discovered the remedy; 
but before passing to that branch of our subject it will be 
well to review the tendencies or remedies which are cur- 
rently relied on or advocated. The remedy to which our 
conclusions point is at once radical and simple—so radical 
that, on the one side, it will not be fairly considered so long 
as any faith remains in the efticacy of less caustic measures; 
so simple that, on the other side, its.real efficacy and com- 
prehensiveness are likely to be overlooked, until the effect 
of more elaborate measures is estimated. 

The tendencies and measures which current literature 
and discussions show to be more or less relied on or 
advocated as calculated to relieve poverty and distress 
among the masses, may be divided into six classes. I do 
not mean that there are so many distinct parties or schools 
of thought, but merely that for the purpose of our inquiry, 
prevailing opinions and proposed measures may be so 
grouped forreview. Remedies which for the sake of greater 
convenience and clearness we shall consider separately are 
. often combined in thought. 

There are many persons who still retain a comfortable 
belief that material progress will ultimately extirpate pov- 
erty, and there are many who look to prudential restraint 
upon the increase of population as the most efficacious 
means, but the fallacy of these views has already been 
sufficiently shown. Let us now consider what may be 
hoped for: 

J. From greater economy in government. 

II. From the better education of the working classes 

and improved habits of industry and thrift, 


270 THE REMEDY. Book VL 


III. From combinations of workmen for the advance of 
wages. 

IV. From the co-operation of labor and capital. 

VY. From governmental direction and interference. 

VI. From amore general distribution of land. 

Under these six heads I think we may in essential form 
review all hopes and propositions for the relief of social 
distress short of the simple but far reaching measure which 
I shall propose. 


I.—ffrom Greater Economy in Government. 


Until a very few years ago it was an article of faith with 
Americans—a belief shared by European liberals—that the 
poverty of the down-trodden masses of the Old World was 
due to aristocratic and monarchical institutions. This be- 
lief has rapidly passed away with the appearance in the 
United States, under republican institutions, of social dis- 
tress of the same kind, if not of the same intensity, as that 
prevailing in Europe. But social distress is still largely 
attributed to the immense burdens which existing govern- 
ments impose—the great debts, the military and naval 
establishments, the extravagance which is characteristic as 
well of republican as of monarchical rulers, and especially 
characteristic of the administration of great cities. To 
these must be added, in the United States, the robbery in- 
‘volved in the protective tariff, which for every twenty-five 
cents it puts in the treasury takes a dollar and it may be 
four or five out of the pocket of the consumer. Now, there 
seems to be an evident connection between the immense 
sums thus taken from the people and the privations of the 
lower classes, and it is upon a superficial view natural to 
suppose that a reduction in the enormous burdens thus 
uselessly imposed would make it easier for the poorest to 
get a living. Buta consideration of the matter in the light 
of the economic principles heretofore traced out will show 
that this would not be the effect. A reduction in the 
amount taken from the aggregate produce of a community 
by taxation would be simply equivalent to an increase in 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. Se 


the power of net production. It would in effect add to the 
productive power of labor just as do the increasing den- 
sity of population and improvement in the arts. And as 
the advantage in the one case goes, and must go, to the 
owners of land, in increased rent, so would the advantage 
in the other. 

From the produce of the labor and capital of Mngland 
are now supported the burden of an immense debt, an Hs- 
tablished Church, an expensive royal family, a large number 
of sinecurists, a great army and great navy. Suppose the 
debt repudiated, the Church disestablished, the royal 
family set adrift to make a living for themselves, the sine- 
curists cut off, the army disbanded, the officers and men of 
the navy discharged and the ships sold. An enormous re- 
duction in taxation would thus become possible. There 
would be a great addition to the net produce which remains 
to be distributed among the parties to production. But it 
would only be such an addition as improvement in the arts 
has been for a long time constantly making, and not so 
great an addition as steam and machinery have made 
within the last twenty or thirty years. And as these ad- 
ditions have not alleviated pauperism, but have only 
increased rent, so would this. English land owners would 
reap the whole benefit. I will not dispute that if all these 
things could be done suddenly, and without the destruction 
and expense involved in a revolution, there might be a 
temporary improvement in the condition of the lowest class; 
but such a sudden and peaceable reform is manifestly im- 
possible. And if it were, any temporary improvement 
would, by the process we now see going on in the United 
States, be ultimately swallowed up by increased land values. 

And, so, in the United States, if we were to reduce pub- 
lic expenditures to the lowest possible point, and meet 
them by revenue taxation, the benefit could certainly not 
be greater than that which railroads have brought. There 
would be more wealth left in the hands of the people as a 
whole, just as the railroads have put more wealth in the 
hands of the people as a whole, but the same inexorable 


979 THE REMEDY. Book V1. 


laws would operate as to its distribution. The condition of 
those who live by their labor would not ultimately be im- 
proved. 

A dim consciousness of this pervades—or, rather, is be- 
ginning to pervade—the masses, and constitutes one of the 
grave political difficulties that are closing in around the 
American republic. Those who have nothing but their labor, 
and especially the proletarians of the cities—a growing 
class—care little about the prodigality of government, and 
in many cases are disposed to look upon it asa good thing— 
‘furnishing employment,” or ‘‘ putting money in circula- 
tion.” Tweed, who robbed New York as a guerrilla chief 
might levy upon a captured town (and who was but a type 
of the new banditti who are grasping the government of all 
our cities), was undoubtedly popular with a majority of the 
voters, though his thieving was notorious, and his spoils 
were blazoned in big diamonds and lavish personal expen- 
diture. After his indictment, he was triumphantly elected 
to the Senate; and, even when a recaptured fugitive, was 
frequently cheered on his way from court to prison. He 
had robbed the public treasury of many millions, but the 
proletarians felt that he had not robbed them. And the 
verdict of political economy is the same as theirs. 

Let me be clearly understood. I do not say that govern- 
mental economy is not desirable; but simply that reduction 
in the expenses of government can have no direct effect in 
extirpating poverty and increasing wages, as long as land is 
monopolized. 

Although this is true, yet even with sole reference to the 
interests of the lowest class, no effort should be spared to 
keep down useless expenditures. The more complex and 
extravagant government becomes, the more it gets to be a 
power distinct from and independent of the people, and 
the more difficult does it become to bring questions of real 
public policy to a popular decision. Look at our elections 
in the United States—upon what do they turn? The most 
momentous problems are pressing upon us, yet so great is 
the amount of money in politics, so large are the personal 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 273 


interests involved, that the most important questions of 
government are but little considered. The average Ameri- 
can voter has prejudices, party feelings, general notions of 
a certain kind, but he gives to the fundamental questions 
of government not much more thought than a street car 
horse does to the profits of the line. Were this not the 
case, so many hoary abuses could not have survived anl 
so many new ones been added. Anything that tends 
to make government simiple and inexpensive tends to put 
it under control of the people and to bring questions of 
real importance to the front. But no reduction in the ex- 
penses of governmént can of itself cure or mitigate the 
evils that arise from a constant tendency to the unequal 
distribution of wealth. 


IT.—From the Diffusion of” Education and Improved Habits 
of Industry and Thrift. 


There is, and always has been, a wide-spread belief among 
the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering 
of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, 
and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the 
sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of 
superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries 
like the United States, where all men are politically equal, 
and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentia- 
tion into classes has been of individuals rather than of 
families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of sep- 
aration have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn. It 
is but natural for those who can trace their own better cir- 
cumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave 
them a start, and the superior intelligence that enabled 
them to take advantage of every opportunity,* to imagine 
that those who remain poor do so simply from lack of 
these qualities. 

But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution of 
wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced out, 


* To say nothing of superior want of conscience, which is often the determining 
quality which makes a millionaire out of one who otherwise might have been a poor 
man. 


O74. THE REMEDY. Pace vl: 


will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is similar 

to that which would be involved in the assertion that every 

one of anumber of competitors might win a race. That 

any oxvé might is true; that every one might is impossible. 

| For, as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we have 

AY, seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or product of 
labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is taken out; 
and when land is all monopolized, as it is everywhere except 
in the newest communities, rent must drive wages down to 
the point at which the poorest paid class will be just able 
to live and reproduce, and thus wages are forced to a mini- 
mum fixed by what is called the standard of comfort—that 
is, the amount of necessaries and comforts which habit 
leads the working classes to demand as the lowest on which 
they will consent to maintain their numbers. This being 
the case, industry, skill, frugality, and intelligence can only 
avail the individual in so far as they are superior to the 
general level—just as in a race speed can only avail the 
runner in so far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If 
one man work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence 
than ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of in- © 
dustry, skill, or intelligence is brought up to the higher 
point, the increased intensity of application will secure but 
the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must 
work harder still. 

One individual may save money from his wages by living 
as Dr. Franklin did when, during his apprenticeship and 
early journeyman days, he concluded to practice vegeta- 
rianism; and many poor families might be made more 
comfortable by being taught to prepare the cheap dishes to 
which Franklin tried to limit the appetite of his employer 
Keimer, as a condition to his acceptance of the position of 
confuter of opponents to the new religion of which Keimer 
wished to become the prophet,* but if the working classes 
generally came to live in that way, wages would ultimately 


* Franklin, in his inimitable way, relates how Keimer finally broke his resolution and 
ordering a roast pig invited two lady friends to dine with him, but the pig being brought 
in before the company arrived, Keimer could not resist the temptation and ate it all 
himself, 


Chap I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 215 


fall in proportion, and whoever wished to get ahead by the - 
practice of economy, or to mitigate poverty by teaching it, 
would be compelled to devise some still cheaper mode of 
keeping soul and body together. If, under existing con- 
ditions, American mechanics would come down to the 
Chinese standard of living, they would ultimately have to 
come down to the Chinese standard of wages; or if Eng- 
lish laborers would content themselves with the rice diet 
and scanty clothing of the Bengalee, labor would soon be 
as ill paid in England as in Bengal. The introduction of 
the potato into Ireland was expected to improve the con- 
dition of the poorer classes, by increasing the difference 
between the wages they received and the cost of their liv- 
ing. The consequences that did ensue were arise of rent 
and a lowering of wages, and, with the potato blight, the 
ravages of famine among a population that had already re- 
duced its standard of comfort so low that the next step was 
starvation. 

And, so, if one individual work more hours than the 
- average, he will increase his wages; but the wages of all 
cannot be increased in this way. It is notorious that in 
_ occupations where working hours are long, wages are not 
higher than where working hours are shorter; generally the 
reverse, for the longer the working day, the more help- 
less does the laborer become—the less time has he to 
look around him and develop other powers than those 
called forth by his work; the less becomes his ability to 
change his occupation or to take advantage of circumstan- 
ces. And, so, the individual workman who gets his wife 
and children to assist him may thus increase his income;; 
but in occupations where it has become habitual for the 
wife and children of the laborer to supplement his work, it 
is notorious that the wages earned by the whole family do 
not on the average exceed those of the head of the family 
in occupations where it is usual for him only to work. 
Swiss family labor in watch-making competes in cheapness 
with American machinery. The Bohemian cigar makers of 
New York, who work, men, women, and children, in their 


276 THE REMEDY. Book V1. 


tenement-house rooms, have reduced the prices of cigar 
making to less than the Chinese in San Francisco were 
getting. 

These general facts are well known. ‘They are fully rec- 
ognized in standard politico-economic works, where, how- 

Pe they are explained upon the Malthusian theory of 
the tendency of population to multiply up to the limit of 
subsistence. The true explanation, as I have sufficiently 
shown, is in the tendency of rent to reduce wages. 

As to the effects of education, it may be worth while to 
say a few words specially, for there is a prevailing disposi- 
tion to attribute to it something like a magical influence. 
Now, education is only education in so far as it enables a 
man to more effectively use his natural powers, and this is 
something that what we call education in very great part 
fails to do. I remember a little girl, pretty well along in 
her school geography and astronomy, who was much aston- 
ished to find that the ground in her mother’s back yard was 
really the surface of the earth, and, if you talk with them, 
you will find that a good deal of the knowledge of many 
college graduates is much like that of the little girl. They 
seldom think any better, and sometimes not so well as 
men who have never been to college. 

A gentleman who had spent many years in Australia, and 
knew intimately the habits of the aborigines (Rev. Dr. 
Bleesdale), after giving some instances of their wonderful 
skill in the use of their weapons, in foretelling changes in 
the wind and weather and in trapping the shyest birds, 
once said to me, ‘I think it a great mistake to look on these 
black fellows as ignorant. Their knowledge is different 
from ours, but in it they are generally better educated. As 
soon as they begin to toddle, they are taught to play with 
little boomerangs and other weapons, to observe and to 
judge, and, when they are old enough to take care of them- 
selves, they are fully able to do so—are, in fact, in 
reference to the nature of their knowledge, what I should 
call well-educated gentlemen; which is more than I can 
-say for many of our young fellows who have had what wo 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 277 


call the best advantages, but who enter upon manhood un- 
able to do anything either for themselves or fo. others.’’ 

Be this as it may, it is evident that intelligence, which is 
or should be the aim of education, until it induce: and en- 
ables the masses to discover and remove the. cause of the 
unequal distribution of wealth, can only operate upon 
wages by increasing the effective power oi labor. It has 
the same effect as increased skill or industry. And it can 
only raise the wages of the individual in so far as it renders 
him superior to others. When to read and write were rare 
accomplishments, a clerk commanded high respect and large 
wages, but now the ability to read and write ha become so 
nearly universal as to give no advantage. Among the 
Chinese the ability to read and write seems absolutely uni- 
versal, but wages in China touch the lowest possible point. 
The diffusion of intelligence, except as it may make men 
discontented with a state of things which condemns pro- 
ducers to a life of toil while non-producers loll in luxury, 
cannot tend to raise wages generally, 01 in any way improve 
the condition of the lowest class—the ‘‘ mud-sills” of so- 
ciety, as a Southern Senator once called them—who must 
rest on the soil, no matter how high the superstructure may 
be carried. No increase of the etftective power of labor can 
increase general wages, so long as rent swallows up all the 
gain, This is not merely a deduction from principles. It 
is the fact, proved by experience. The growth of knowl- 
edge and the progress of invention have multiplied the 
effective power of labor over and ove1 again without in- 
creasing wages. In England there are over a million 
paupers. In the United States almshouses are increasing 
and wages are decreasing. 

It is true that greater industry and skill, greater pru- 
dence, and a higher intelligence, are, as arule, found asso- 
ciated with a better material condition of the working 
classes; but that this is effect, not cause, is shown by the re- 
lation of the facts. Wherever the material condition of the 
laboring classes has been improved, improvement in their 
personal qualities has followed, and wherever their mate- 


278 THE REMEDY. Book V1 


rial condition has been depressed, deterioration in these 
qualities has been the result; but nowhere can improve- 
ment in material condition be shown as the result of the 
increase of industry, skill, prudence, or intelligence in a 
class condemned to toil fora bare living, though these 
‘qualities when once attained (or, rather, their concomitant 
—the improvement in the standard of comfort) offer a 
strong, and, in many cases, a sufficient, resistance to the 
lowering of material condition. 

The fact is, that the qualities that raise man above the 
animal are superimposed on those which he shares with the 
animal, and that it is only as he is relieved from the wants 
of his animal nature that his intellectual and moral nature 
can grow. Compel aman to drudgery for the necessities 
of animal existence, and he will lose the incentive to indus- 
try—the progenitor of skill-—-and will do only what he is 
forced to do. Make his condition such that it cannot be 
much worse, while there is little hope that anything he can 
do will make it much better, and _he will cease to look be- 
yond the day. Deny him leisure—and leisure does not 
mean the want of employment, but the absence of the need 
which forces to uncongenial employment—and you cannot, 
even by running the child through a common school and 
supplying the man with a newspaper, make him intelligent. 

It is true that improvement in the material condition of 
a people or class may not show immediately in mental and 
moral improvement. Increased wages may at first be taken 
out in idleness and dissipation. But they will ultimately 
bring increased industry, skill, intelligence, and thrift. 
Comparisons between different countries; between different 
classes in the same country; between the same people at 
different periods; and between the same people when their 
conditions are changed by emigration, show, as an invari- 
able result, that the personal qualities of which we are 
speaking appear as material conditions are improved, and 
disappear as material conditions are depressed. Poverty 
is the Slough of Despond which Bunyan saw in his dream, 
and into which good books may be tossed forever without 


Chap, I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 279 


result. To make people industrious, prudent, skillful, and 
intelligent, they must be relieved from want. If you would 
have the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must 
first make him free. 


IIT.—From Combinations of Workmen. 


It is evident from the laws of distribution, as previously 
traced, that combinations of workmen can advance wages, 
and this not at the expense of other workmen, as is some- 
times said, nor yet at the expense of capital, as is generally 
believed; but, ultimately, at the expense of rent. That no 
general advance in wages can be secured by combination; 
that any advance in particular wages thus secured must re- 
duce other wages or the profits of capital, or both—are ideas 
that spring from the erroneous notion that wages are 
drawn from capital. The fallacy of these ideas is demon- 
strated, not alone by the laws of distribution as we have 
worked them out, but by experience, as far as it has gone. 
The advance of wages in particular trades by combinations 
of workmen, of which there are many examples, has no- 
where shown any effect in lowering wages in other trades, 
or in reducing the rate of profits. Except as it may affect 
his fixed capital or current engagements, a diminution of 
wages can only benefit, and an increase of wages only injure 
an employer, in so far as it gives him an advantage or puts 
him at a disadvantage as compared with other employers. 
The employer who first succeeds in reducing the wages of 
his hands, or is first compelled to pay an advance, gains an 
advantage, or is put at a disadvantage in regard to his 
competitors, which ceases when the movement includes 
them also. So far, however, as the change in wages affects 
his contracts or stock on hand, by changing the relative 
cost of production, it may be to him a real gain or loss, 
though this gain or loss, being purely relative, disappears 
when the whole community is considered. And, if the 
change in wages works a change in relative demand, it may 
render capital fixed in machinery, buildings, or otherwise, 
more or less profitable. But, in this, a new equilibrium is 


280 THE REMEDY. Hook itch 


soon reached; for, especially in a progressive country, fixed 
capital is only somewhat less mobile than circulating capi- 
tal. If there is too little in a certain form, the tendency of 
capital to assume that form soon brings it up to the re- 
quired amount; if there is too much, the cessation of incre- 
ment scon restores the level. 

But, while a change in the rate of wages in any particu- 
lar occupation may induce a change in the relative demand 
for labor, it can produce no change in the aggregate de- 
mand. For instance, let us suppose that a combination 
of the workmen engaged in any particular manufacture 
raise wages in one country, while a combination of em- 
ployers reduce wages in the same manufacture in another 
country. If the change be great enough, the demand, or 
part of the demand, in the first country will now be sup- 
plied by importation of such manufactures from the second. 
But, evidently, this increase in importations of a partic- 
ular kind must necessitate either a corresponding decrease 
in importations of other kinds, or a corresponding increase 
in exportations. Tor, itis only with the produce of its la- 
bor and capital, that one country can demand, or can ob- 
tain, in exchange, the produce of the labor and capital of 
another. The idea that the lowering of wages can increase, 
or the increase of wages can diminish, the trade of a coun- 
try, is as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a coun- 
try can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by 
the removal of restrictions on trade. If all wages in any 
particular country were to be doubled, that country would 
continue to export.and import the same things, and in the 
same proportions; for exchange is determined not by abso- 
lute, but by relative, cost of production. But, if wages in 
some branches of production were doubled, and in others 
not increased, or not increased so much, there would be a 
change in the proportion of the various things imported, 
but no change in the proportion between exports and in- 
ports. 

While most of the objections made to the combina- 
tion of workmen for the advance of wages are thus baseless, 


Chap. 1. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 281 


while the success of such combinations cannot reduce other 
wages, or decrease the profits of capital, or injuriously 
affect national prosperity, yet so great are the difficulties 
in the way of the effective combinations of laborers, that 
the good that can be accomplished by them is extremely 
limited, while there are inherent disadvantages in the 
process. 

To raise wages in a particular occupation or occupations, 
which is all that any combination of workmen yet made 
has been equal to attempting, is manifestly a task the difii- 
culty of which progressively increases. For the higher 
are wages of any particular kind raised above their normal 
level with other wages, the stronger are the tendencies to 
bring them back. Thus, if a printers’ union, by a successful 
or threatened strike, raise the wages of type-setting ten per 
cent. above the normal rate as compared with other wages, 
relative demand and supply are at once affected. On the 
one hand, there is a tendency to a diminution of the amount 
of type-setting called for; and, on the other, the higher rate 
of wages tends to increase the number of compositors in 
ways the strongest combination cannot altogether prevent. 
If the increase be twenty per cent., these tendencies are 
much stronger; if it is fifty per cent., they become stronger 
still, and so on. So that practically—even in countries 
like England, where the lines between different trades are 
much more distinct and difficult to pass than in countries 
lke the United States—that which trades’ unions, even 
when supporting each other, can do in the way of raising 
wages is comparatively little, and this lttle, moreover, is 
confined to their own sphere, and does not affect the lower 
stratum of unorganized laborers, whose condition most 
needs alleviation and ultimately determines that of all 
above them. The only way by which wages could be raised 
to any extent and with any permanence by this method 
would be by a general combination, such as was aimed at 
by the Internationals, which should include laborers of all 
kinds. But such a combination may be set down as practi- 


cally impossible, for the difficulties of combination, great 
13 


{ 


282 THE REMEDY. Book V4. 


enough in the most highly paid and smallest trades, become 
greater and greater as we descend in the industrial scale. 

Nor, in the struggle of endurance, which is the only 
method which combinations not to work for less than a cer- 
tain minimum have of effecting the increase of wages, 
must it be forgotten who are the real parties pitted against 
each other. Itis not labor and capital. Itis laborers on 
the one side and the owners of land on the other. If the 
contest were between labor and capital, it would be on 
much more equal terms. For the power of capital to stand 
out is only some little greater than that of labor. Capital 
not only ceases to earn anything when not used, but it goes 
to waste—for in nearly all its forms it can only be main- 
tained by constant reproduction. But land will not starve 
like laborers or go to waste like capital—its owners can 
wait. They may be inconvenienced, it is true, but what is 
inconvenience to them, is destruction to capital and starva- 
tion to labor. 

The agricultural laborers in certain parts of England are 
now endeavoring to combine for the purpose of securing 
an increase in their miserably low wages. If it was capital 
that was receiving the enormous difference between the real 
produce of their labor and the pittance they get out of it, 
they would have but to make an effective combination to 
secure success; for the farmers, who are their direct em- 
plovers, can afford to go without labor but little, if any, 
better than the laborers can afford to go without wages. 
But the farmers cannot yield much without a reduction of 
rent; and thus it is between the land owners and the la- 
borers that the real struggle must come. Suppose the 
combination to be so thorough as to include all agricul- 
tural laborers, and to prevent from doing so all who might 
be tempted to take their places. The laborers refuse to 
work except at a considerable advance of wages; the farmere 
can only give it by securing a considerable reduction of 
rent, and have no way to back their demands except as the 
laborers back theirs, by refusing to go on with production. 
If cultivation thus comes to a dead-lock, the land owners 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 283 


would lose only their rent, while the land improved by lying 
fallow. But the laborers would starve. And if English 
Jaborers of all kinds were united in one grand league for 
a general increase of wages, the real contest would be the 
same, and under the same conditions. For wages could not 
be increased except to the decrease of rent; and in a general 
dead-lock, land owners could live, while laborers of all 
sorts must starve or emigrate. The owners of the land of 
England are by virtue of their ownership the masters of 
England. So true is it that ‘‘to whomsoever the soil at 
any time belongs, to him belong the fruits of it.” The 
white parasols and the elephants mad with pride passed 
with the grant of English land, and the people at large can 
never regain their power until that grant is resumed. 
What is true of England, is universally true. 

It may be said that such a dead-lock in production could 
never occur. This is true; but only true because no such 
thorough combination of labor as might produce it is pos- 
sible. But the fixed and definite nature of land enables 
land owners to combine much more easily and efficiently 
than either laborers or capitalists. How easy and efficient 
their combination is, there are many historical examples. 
And the absolute necessity for the use of land, and the cer- 
tainty in all progressive countries that it must increase in 
value, produce among land owners, without any formal 
combination, all the effects that could be produced by the 
most rigorous combination among laborers or capitalists. 
Deprive a laborer of opportunity of employment, and he 
will soon be anxious to get work on any terms, but when 
the receding wave of speculation leaves nominal land values 
clearly above real values, whoever has lived in a growing 
country knows with what tenacity land owners hold on. 

And, besides these practical difficulties in the plan of 
forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in 
such methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen 
should not blink. I speak without prejudice, for I am 
still an honorary member of the union which, while working 
at my trade, I always loyally supported. But, see: The 


234 THE REMEDY. | Book: VI 


methods by which a trade union can alone act, are neces- 
sarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyranni- 
cal. A strike, which is the only recourse by which a trade 
union can enforce its demands, is a destructive contest-—— 
just such a contest as that to which an eccentric, called 
‘¢ The Money King,” once, in the early days of San Frans 
cisco, challenged a man who had taunted him with means 
ness, that they should go down to the wharf and alternately 
toss twenty-dollar pieces into the bay until one gave in. 
The struggle of endurance involved in a strike is, really, 
what it has often been compared to—a war; and, hke all 
war, it lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like 
the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the man 
who would fight for freedom, must, when he enters an 
army, give up his personal freedom and become a mere 
part in a great machine, so must it be with workmen who 
organize for a strike. These combinations are, therefore, 
necessarily destructive of the very things which workmen 
seek to gain through them—wealth and freedom. 

There is an ancient Hindoo mode of compelling the pay- 
ment of a just debt, traces of something akin to which Sir 
Henry Maine has found in the laws of the Irish Brehons. 
It is called, sitting dharna—the creditor seeking enforce- 
ment of his debt by sitting down at the door of the debtor, 
and refusing to eat or drink until he is paid. 

Like this is the method of labor combinations. In their 
strikes, trades’ unions sit dharna. But, unlike the Hindoo, 
they have not the power of superstition to back them. 


IV.—From Co-operation. 

It is now, and has been for some time, the fashion to 
preach co-operation as the sovereign remedy for the griev- 
ances of the working classes. But, unfortunately for the 
efficacy of co-operation as a remedy for social evils, these 
evils, as we have seen, do not arise from any conflict be- 
tween labor and capital; and if co-operation were universal, 
it could not raise wages or relieve poverty. This is readily 
seen, | 


Chap. 1. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 285 


Co-operation is of two kinds—co-operation in supply and 
co-operation in production. Now, co-operation in supply, 
let it go as far as it may in excluding middlemen, only re- 
duces the cost of exchanges. It is simply a device to save 
labor and eliminate risk, and its effect upon distribution 
can only be that of the improvements and inventions which 
have in modern times so wonderfully cheapened and facili- 
tated exchanges—viz., to increase rent. And co-operation 
in production is simply a reversion to that form of wages 
which still prevails in the whaling service, and is there 
termed a ‘“‘ lay.” It is the substitution of proportionate 
wages for fixed wages—a substitution of which there are 
occasional instances in almost all employments; or, if the 
management is left to the workmen, and the capitalist but 
takes his proportion of the net produce, it is simply the 
system that has prevailed to a large extent in Kuropean ag- 
riculture since the days of the Roman Empire—the colon- 
ial or metayer system. All that is claimed for co-oper- 
ation in production is, that it makes the workman more 
active and industrious—in other words, that it increases the 
efficiency of labor. Thus its effect is in the same direction 
as the steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine— 
in short, all the things in which material progress consists, 
and it can only produce the same result—viz., the increase of 
rent. 

It is a striking proof of how first principles are ignored 
in dealing with social problems, that in current economic 
and semi-ecovomic literature so much importance is 
attached to co-operation as a means for increasing wages 
and relieving poverty. That it can have no such general 
tendency is apparent. 

Waiving all the difficulties that under present conditions 
beset co-operation either of supply or of production, and 
supposing it so extended as to supplant present methods— 
that co-operative stores made the connection between pro- 
ducer and consumer with the minimum of expense, and co- 
operative workshops, factories, farms, and mines, abolished 
the employing capitalist who pays fixed wages, and greatly 


« 


286 THE REMEDY. Book VI. 


increased the efficiency of labor—what then? Why, sim- 
ply that it would become possible to produce the same 
amount of wealth with less labor, and consequently that 
the owners of land, the source of all wealth, could com- 
mand a greater amount of wealth for the use of their land. 
This is not a matter of mere theory; it is proved by experi- 
ence and by existing facts. Improved methods and improved 
machinery have the same effect that co-operation aims at— 
of reducing the cost of bringing commodities to the con- 
sumer and increasing the efficiency of labor, and it is in 
these respects that the older countries have the advantage 
of new settlements. But, as experience has amply shown, 
improvements in the methods and machinery of production 
and exchange have no tendency to improve the condition 
of the lowest class, and wages are lower and poverty 
deeper where exchange goes on at the minimum of cost 
and production has the benefit of the best machinery. 
The advantage but adds to rent. 

But suppose co-operation between producers and land 
owners? That would simply amount to the payment of 
rent in kind—the same system under which much land is 
rented in California and the Southern States, where the 
land owner gets a share of the crop. Save as a matter of 
computation it in no wise differs from the system which 
prevails in England of a fixed money rent. Call it co- 
operation, if you choose, the terms of the co-operation 
would still be fixed by the laws which determine rent, and 
wherever land was monopolized, increase in productive 
power would simply give the owners of the land the power 
to demand a larger share. 

That co-operation is by so many believed to be the solus 
tion of the ‘‘labor question” arises from the fact that, 
where it has been tried, it has in many instances improved 
perceptibly the condition of those immediately engaged 
init. But this is due simply to the fact that these cases 
are isolated. Just as industry, economy, or skill may im- 
prove the condition of the workmen who possess them in 
superior degree, but cease to have this effect when improve- 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 287 


ment in these respects becomes general, so a special 
advantage in procuring supplies, or a special efficiency 
given to some labor, may secure advantages which would 
be lost as soon as these improvements became so general as 
to affect the general relations of distribution. And the 
truth is, that, save possibly in educational effects, co- 
operation can produce no general results that competi- 
tion will not produce. Just as the cheap-for-cash stores 
have a similar effect upon prices as the co-operative 
supply associations, so does competition in production 
lead to a similar adjustment of forces and division 
of proceeds as would co-operative production. That in- 
creasing productive power does not add to the reward of 
labor, 1s not because of competition, but because competi- 
tion is one-sided. Land, without which there can be no 
production, is monopolized, and the competition of pro- 
ducers for its use forces wages to a minimum and gives all 
the advantage of increasing productive power to land own- 
ers, in higher rents and increased land values. Destroy this 
monopoly, and competition could only exist to accomplish 
the end which co-operation aims at—to give to each what 
he fairly earns. Destroy this monopoly, and industry must 
become the co-operation of equals. 


V.i—From Governmental Direction and Interference. 


The limits within which I wish to keep this book will not 
permit an examination in detail of the methods in which it 
is proposed to mitigate or extirpate poverty by govern- 
mental regulation of industry and accumulation, and which 
in their most thorough-going form are called socialistic 
Nor is it necessary, for the same defects attach to them all. 
These are the substitution of governmental direction for 
the play of individual action, and the attempt to secure by 
restriction what can better be secured by freedom. As to 
the truths that are involved in socialistic ideas I shall have 
something to say hereafter; but it is evident that whatever 
savors of regulation and restriction is in itself bad, and 
should not be resorted to if any other mode of accomplish: 


288 THE REMEDY. Book VI 


ing the same end presents itself. For instance, to take one 
of the simplest and mildest of the class of measures I refer 
to—a graduated tax on incomes. The object at which it 
aims, the reduction or prevention of immense concentra- 
tions of wealth, is good; but this means involves the em- 
ployment of a large number of officials clothed with inqui- 
sitorial powers; temptations to bribery, and perjury, and all 
other means of evasion, which beget a demoralization of 
opinion, and put a premium upon unscrupulousness and a 
tax upon conscience; and, finally, just in proportion as the 
tax accomplishes its effect, a lessening in the incentive to 
the accumulation of wealth, which is one of the strong 
forces of industrial progress. While, if the elaborate 
schemes for regulating everything and finding a place for 
everybody could be carried out, we should have a state 
of society resembling that of ancient Peru, or that which, 
to their eternal honor, the Jesuits instituted and so long 
maintained in Paraguay. 

I will not say that such a state as this is not a 
better social state than that to which we now seem to be 
tending, for in ancient Peru, though production went on 
under the greatest disadvantages, from the want of iron 
and the domestic animals, yet there was no such thing 
as want, and the people went to their work with songs. 
But this it is unnecessary to discuss. Socialism in any- 
thing approaching such a form, modern society cannot 
successfully attempt. The only force that has ever proved 
competent for it—a strong and definite religious faith—is 
wanting and is daily growing.less. We have passed out of 
the socialism of the tribal state, and cannot re-enter it 
again, except by a retrogression that would involve anarchy 
and perhaps barbarism. Our governments, as is already 
plainly evident, would break down in the attempt. Instead 
of an intelligent award of duties and earnings, weshould 
have a Roman distribution of Sicilian corn, and the dema- 
gogue would soon become the Imperator. 

The ideal of socialism is grand and noble; and it is, I 
am convinced, possible of realization, but such a state of 


Crap. I. INEFFICIENCY. OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 289° 


society cannot be manufactured—it must grow. Society is 
an organism, not a machine. It can only live by the indi- 
vidual life of its parts. And in the free and natural de- 
velopment of all the parts will be secured the harmony of 
the whole. All that is necessary to social regeneration is 
included in the motto of those Russian patriots sometimes 
called Nihilists—‘‘ Land and Liberty !’ 


VI.—From a More General Distribution of Land. 


There is a rapidly growing feeling that the tenure of land 
is in some manner connected with the social distress which 
manifests itself in the most progressive countries; but this 
feeling as yet mostly shows itself in propositions which look 
to the more general division of landed property—in Eng- 
land, free trade in land, tenant right, or the equal partition 
of landed estates among heirs; in the United States, restric- 
tions upon the size of individual holdings. It has been also 
proposed in England that the state should buy out the 
landlords, and in the United States that grants of money 
should be made to enable the settlements of colonies upon 
public lands. The former proposition let us pass for the 
present; the latter, so far as its distinctive feature is con- 
cerned, falls into the category of the measures considered 
in the last section. It needs no argument to show to what 
abuses and demoralization grants of public money or credit 
would lead. 

How what the English writers call ‘‘ free trade in land ” 
—the removal of duties and restrictions upon conveyances— 
could facilitate the division of ownership in agricultural 
land, I cannot see, though it might to some extent have 
that effect as regards town property. The removal of 
restrictions upon buying and selling would merely permit 
the ownership of land to more quickly assume the form to 
which it tends. Now, that the tendency in Great Britain 
is to concentration is shown by the fact that, in spite of the 
difficulties interposed by the cost of transfer, land owner- 
ship has been and is steadily concentrating there, and that 
this tendency is a general one is shown by the fact that the 


; 


4 


290 THE REMEDY. Book V2. 


same process of concentration is observable in the United 
States. 

I say this unhesitatingly in regard to the United States, 
although statistical tables are sometimes quoted to show a 
different tendency. But how, in such a country as the 
United States, the ownership of land may be really con- 
centrating, while census tables show rather a diminution 
in the average size of holdings, is readily seen. As land is 
brought into use, and, with the growth of population, 
passes from a lower to a higher or intenser use, the size of 
holdings tends to diminish. A small stock range would be a 
large farm, a small farm would be a large orchard, vineyard, 
nursery, or vegetable garden, and a patch of land which 
would be small even for these purposes would make a very 
large city property. Thus, the growth of population, which 
puts land to higher or intenser uses, tends naturally to 
reduce the size of holdings, by a process very marked in 
new countries; but with this may go on a tendency to the 
concentration of land ownership, which, though not re- 
vealed by tables which show the average size of holdings, 
is just as clearly seen. Average holdings of one acre ina 
city may show a much greater concentration of land owner- 
ship than average holdings of 640 acres in a newly settled 
township. I refer to this to show the fallacy in the deduc- 
tions drawn from the tables which are frequently paraded 
in the United States to show that land monopoly is an evil 
that will cure itself. On the contrary, it is obvious that the 
proportion of land owners to the whole population is con- 
stantly decreasing. . 

And that there is in the United States, as there is in 
Great Britain, a strong tendency to the concentration of 
jand ownership in agriculture is clearly seen. As, in 
Kngland and Ireland, small farms are being thrown into 
larger ones, so in New England, according to the reports 
of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the size 
of farms increasing. This tendency is even more clearly 
noticeable in the newer States and Territories. Only a few 
years ago a farm of 320 acres would, under the system of 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 291 


agriculture prevailing in the northern parts of the Union, 
have anywhere been a large one, probably as much as one 
man could cultivate to advantage. In California now there 
are farms (not cattle ranges) of five, ten, twenty, forty and 
sixty thousand acres, while the model farm of Dakota 
embraces 100,000 acres. The reason is obvious. It is the 
application of machinery to agriculture and the general 
tendency to production on a large scale. The same tens 
dency which substitutes the factory, with its army of 
operatives, for many independent hand-loom weavers, is 
beginning to exhibit itself in agriculture. 

Now, the existence of this tendency shows two things: 
first, that any measures which merely permit or facilitate 
the greater subdivision of land would be inoperative; and, 
second, that any measures which would compel it would 
have a tendency to check production. If land in large 
bodies can be cultivated more cheaply than land in small 
bodies, to restrict ownership to small bodies will reduce 
the aggregate production of wealth, and, in so far as 
such restrictions are imposed and take effect, will they 
tend to diminish the general productiveness of labor and 
capital. 

The effort, therefore, to secure a fairer division of wealth 
by such restrictions is liable to the drawback of lessening 
the amount to be divided. The device is like that of the 
monkey, who, dividing the cheese between the cats, equal- 
ized matters by taking a bite off the biggest piece. 

But there is not merely this objection, which weighs 
against every proposition to restrict the ownership of land, 
with a force that increases with the efficiency of the pro- 
posed measure. There is the further and fatal objection 
that restriction will not secure the end which is alone 
worth aiming at—a fair division of the produce. It will 
not reduce rent, and therefore cannot increase wages. It 
may make the comfortable classes larger, but will not im- 
prove the condition of those in the lowest class. 

If what is known asthe Ulster tenant right were extended 
to the whole of Great Britain, it would be but to carve out 


f 


999, THE REMEDY. Book VL 


of the estate of the landlord an estate for the tenant. The 
condition of the laborer would not be a whit improved. If 
landlords were prohibited from asking an increase of rent 
from their tenants and from ejecting a tenant so long as 
the fixed rent was paid, the body of the producers would 
gain nothing. Economic rent would still increase, and 
would still steadily lessen the proportion of the produce 
going to labor and capital. The only difference would be 
that the tenants of the first landlords, who would become 
landlords in their turn, would profit by the increase. 

If by a restriction upon the amount of land any one in- 
dividual might bold, by the regulation of devises and 
successions, or by cumulative taxation, the few thousand 
land holders of Great Britain should be increased by two 
or three million, these two or three million people would be 
gainers. But the rest of the population would gain nothing. 
They would have no more share in the advantages of land 
ownership than before. And if, what is manifestly impos- 
sible, a fair distribution of the land were made among the 
whole population, giving to each his equal share, and laws 
enacted which would interpose a barrier to the tendency to 
concentration by forbidding the holding by any one of 
more than the fixed amount, what would become of the in- 
crease of population ? 

Just what may be accomplished by the greater division 
of land may be seen in those districts of France and Bel- 
gium where minute division prevails. That such a division 
of land is on the whole much better, and that it gives a far 
more stable basis to the State than that which prevails in 
England, there can be no doubt. But that it does not 
make wages any higher or improve the condition of the. 
class who have only their labor, is equally clear. These 
French and Belgian peasants practice a rigid economy un- 
known to any of the English speaking peoples. And if 
such striking symptoms of the poverty and distress of the 
lowest class are not apparent as on the other side of the 
channel, it must, I think, be attributed, not only to this 
fact, but to another fact, which accounts for the continu 


Chap. I. INEFFICIENCY OF PROPOSED REMEDIES. 293 


ance of the minute division of the land—that material 
progress has not been so rapid. 

Neither has population increased with the same rapidity 
(on the contrary it has been nearly stationary), nor have 
improvements in the modes of production been so great. 
Nevertheless, M. de Laveleye, all of whose prepossessions 
are in favor of small holdings, and whose testimony will 
therefore carry more weight than that of English observers, 
who may be supposed to harbor a prejudice for the system 
of their own country, states in his paper on the Land 
Systems of Belgium and Holland, printed by the Cobden 
Club, that the condition of the laborer is worse under this 
system of the minute division of land than it isin England; 
while the tenant farmers—for tenancy iargely prevails even 
where the morcellment is greatest—are rack-rented with a 
mercilessness unknown in England, and even in Ireland, 
and the franchise ‘‘ so far from raising them in the social 
scaie, is but a source of mortification and humiliation to 
them, for they are forced to vote according to the dictates 
of the landlord instead of following the dictates of their 
own inclination and convictions.” 

But while the subdivision of land can thus do nothing to 
cure the evils of land monopoly, while it can have no effect 
in raising wages or in improving the condition of the lowest 
classes, its tendency is to prevent the adoption or even advo- 
cacy of more thorough going measures, and to strengthen 
the existing unjust system by interesting a larger num- 
ber in its maintenance. M. de Laveleye, in concluding the 
paper from which I have quoted, urges the greater division 
of land as the surest means of securing the great land 
owners of England from something far more radical. Al- 
though in the districts where land is so minutely divided, 
the condition of the laborer is, he states, the worst in 
Kurope and the renting farmer is much more ground down 
by his landlord than the Irish tenant, yet ‘‘ feelings hostile 
to social order,” M. de Laveleye goes on to say, ‘‘do not 
manifest themselves,” because :— 


The tenant, although ground down by the constant rise of rents, 


294 THE REMEDY. Book V1. 


_ lives among his equals, peasants like himself who have tenants whom 


they use just as the large land holder does his. His father, his broth- 
er, perhaps the man himself, possesses something like an acre of land, 
which he lets at as high a rent as he can get. In the public house 
peasant proprietors will boast of the high rents they get for their lands, 
just as they might boast of having sold their pigs or potatoes very 
dear. Letting at as high a rent as possible comes thus to seem to him 
to be quite a matter of course, and he never dreams of finding fault 
with either the land owners as a class or with property in land. His 
mind is not likely to dwell on the notion of a caste of domineering 
landlords, of ‘‘ bloodthirsty tyrants,’’ fattening on the sweat of im- 
poverished tenants and doing no work themselves; for those wko 
drive the hardest bargains are not the great land owners but his own 
fellows. Thus, the distribution of a number of small properties 
among the peasantry forms a kind of rampart and safeguard for the 
holders of large estates, and peasant property may without exaggera- 
tion be called the lightning conductor that averts from society dan- 
gers which might otherwise lead to violent catastrophes. 

““The concentration of land in large estates among a small number 
of families is a sort of provocation of leveling legislation. The posi- 
tion of England, so enviable in many respects, seems to me to be in 
this respect full of danger for the future.”’ 


To me, for the very same reason that M. de Laveleye ex- 
presses, the position of England seems full of hope. 

Let us abandon all attempt to get rid of the evils of land 
monopoly by restricting land ownership. An equal distri- 
bution of land is impossible, and anything short of that 
would only be a mitigation not a cure, and a mitigation 
that would prevent the adoption of a cure. Nor is any 
remedy worth considering that does not fall in with the 
natural direction of social development, and swim, so to 
speak, with the current of the times. That concentration 
is the order of development there can be no mistaking— 
the concentration of people in large cities, the concentra- 
tion of handicrafts in large factories, the concentration of 
‘transportation by railroad and steamship lines, and of agri- 
cultural operations in large fields. The most trivial busi- 
nesses are being concentrated in the same way—errands 
are run and carpet sacks are carried by corporations. All 
the currents of the time run to concentration. To suc- 
cessfully resist it we must throttle steam and discharge 
electricity from human service. 


OBA BTR AR. tl: 
THE TRUE REMEDY. 


We have traced the unequal distribution of wealth which 
is the curse and menace of modern civilization to the insti- 
tution of private property in land. We have seen that as 
long as this institution exists no increase in productive 
- power can permanently benefit the masses; but, on the con- 
trary, must tend to still further depress their condition. 
We have examined all the remedies, short of the abolition 
of private property in land, which are currently relied on or 
proposed for the relief of poverty and the better distribu- 
tion of wealth, and have found them all inefficacious or 
impracticable. 

There is but one way to remove an evil—and that is, to 
remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth increases, 
and wages are forced down while productive power grows, 
because land, which is the source of all wealth and the field 
of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty, to make 
wages what justice commands they should be, the full earn- 
ings of the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the in- 
dividual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing © 
else will go to the cause of the evil—in nothing else is 
there the shghtest hope. 

This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal 
distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and 
for all the evils which flow from it: 


We must make land common property. 


We have reached this conclusion by an examination in 
which every step has been proved and secured. In the 
chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is weak. 
Deduction and induction have brought us to the same truth 
—that the unequal ownership of land necessitates the 


296 THE REMEDY. Book V1. 


unequal distribution of wealth. And as in the nature of 
things unequal ownership of land is inseparable from the 
recognition of individual property in land, it necessarily 
follows that the only remedy for the unjust distribution of 
wealth is in making land common property. 

But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, 
will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its 
way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet 
the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this 
truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied. 

In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to a 
new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by subtrac- 
tion and multiplication by division, so may we, by testing 
the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correctness of our 
conclusions as to the cause of the evil. 

The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the 
remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it must 
be consistent with justice; it must be practicable of appli- 
cation; it must accord with the tendencies of social devel- 
opment, and must harmonize with other reforms. 

All this I propose to show. I propose to meet all prac- 
tical objections which can be raised, and to show that this 
simple measure is not only easy of application; but that it 

is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as modern 

v. progress goes on, arise from the greater and greater inequal-. 
ity in the distribution of wealth—that it will substitute 
equality for inequality, plenty for want, justice for injustice, 
social strength for social weakness, and will open the way 
to grander and nobler advances of civilization. 

I thus propose to show that the laws of the universe do 
not deny the natural aspirations of the human heart; that 
the progress of society might be, and, if it is to continue, 
must be, toward equality, not toward inequality; and that 
the economic harmonies prove the truth perceived by the 
Stoic Emperor— 


‘* We are made for co-operation—like feet, like hands, lke 
eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.” 


li 


VOWOvIZe AAU 


JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. 


CHAPTER I.—INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 


CHAPTER II.—_ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF 
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 


CHAPTER III.—CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 
CHAPTER IV.—PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 
CHAPTER V.—PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 


Justice is a relation of congruity which really subsists between two things. This 
relation is always the same, whatever being considers it, whether it be God, or an 
angel, or lastly a man.—Montesquieu. 


GhbtAr Peli Hee Ds 
THE INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 


When it is proposed to abolish private property in land 
the first question that will arise is that of justice. Though 
often warped by habit, superstition, and selfishness into 
the most distorted forms, the sentiment of justice is yet | 
fundamental to the human mind, and whatever dispute 
arouses the passions of men, the conflict is sure to rage, not 
so much as to the question ‘‘Is it wise?” as to the ques- 
tion ‘‘Is it right?” 

This tendency of popular discussions to take an ethical 
form has a cause. It springs from a law of the human 
mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition of 
what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp. That 
alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which 
is right. In the narrow scale of individual actions and in- 
dividual life this truth may be, often obscured, but in the 
wider field of national life it everywhere stands out. 

I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test. If our 
inquiry into the cause which makes low wages and pauper- 
ism the accompaniments of material progress has led us to 
a correct conclusion, it will bear translation from terms of 
political economy into terms of ethics, and as the source of 
social evils show a wrong. If it will not do this, it is dis- 
proved. If it will do this, it is proved by the final decision. 
If private property in land be just, then is the remedy [ 
propose a false one; if, on the contrary, private property in 
land be unjust, then is this remedy the true one. 

What constitutes the rightful basis of property? What 
is it that enables a man to justly say of a thing, ‘‘It is 
mine!’ From what springs the sentiment which acknowl- 
edges his exclusive right as against all the world? Is it not, 


300 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


primarily, the right of a man to himself, to the use of his 
own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his own ex- 
ertions? Is it not this individual right, which springs from 
and is testified to by the natural facts of individual organi- 
zation —the fact that each particular pair of hands obey a 
particular brain and are related to a particular stomach; 
the fact that each man is a definite, coherent, independent 
whole—which alone justifies individual ownership? As a 
man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in concrete 
form belongs to him. 

And for this reason, that which a man makes or produces 
is his own, as against all the world—to enjoy or to destroy, 
to use, to exchange, or to give. No one else can rightfully 
claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong to any 
one else. Thus there is to everything produced by human 
exertion a clear and indisputable title to exclusive possession 
and enjoyment, which is perfectly consistent with justice, as 
it descends from the original producer, in whom it vested 
by natural law. The pen with which I am writing is justly 
mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it, 
for in me is the title of the producers who made it. It has 
become mine, because transferred to me by the stationer, 
to whom it was transferred by the importer, who obtained 
the exclusive right to it by transfer from the manufacturer, 
in whom, by the same process of purchase, vested the rights 
of those who dug the material from the ground and shaped 
itinto a pen. Thus, my exclusive right of ownership in the 
pen springs from the natural right of the individual to the 
use of his own faculties. 

Now, this is not only the original source from which all 
ideas of exclusive ownership arise—as is evident from the 
natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when the idea of 
exclusive ownership is questioned, and the manner in which 
social relations develope—but it is necessarily the only 
source. There can be to the ownership of anything no 
rightful title which is not derived from the title of the pro- 
ducer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man 
to himself, There can be no other rightful title, because 


Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 301 


(1st) there is no other natural right from which any other 
title can be derived, and (2d) because the recognition of 
any other title is inconsistent with and destructive of this. 

For (1st) what other right exists from which the right to 
the exclusive possession of anything can be derived, save 
the right of a man to himself? With what other power is 
man by nature clothed, save the power of exerting his own 
faculties? How can he in any other way act upon or affect 
material things or other men? Paralyze the motor nerves, 
and your man has no more external influence or power 
than a log or stone. From what else, then, can the right of 
possessing and controlling things be derived? If it 
spring not from man himself, from what can it spring? 
Nature acknowledges no ownership or control in man save 
as the result of exertion. In no other way can her treas- 
ures be drawn forth, her powers directed, or her forces 
utilized or controlled. She makes no discriminations 
among men, but is to all absolutely impartial She knows 
no distinction between master and slave, king and subject, 
saint and sinner. All men to her stand upon an equal 
footing and have equal rights. She recognizes no claim 
but that of labor, and recognizes that without respect to 
the claimant. Ifa pirate spread his sails, the wind will fill 
thein as well as it will fill those of a peaceful merchantman 
or missionary bark; if a king and a common man be thrown 
overboard, neither can keep his head above water except 
by swimming; birds will not come to be shot by the pro- 
prietor of the soil any quicker than they will come to be 
shot by the poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook 
in utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a good 
little boy who goes to Sunday school, or a bad little boy 
‘who plays truant; grain will grow only as the ground i6 
prepared and the seed is sown; it is only at the call of la- 
bor that ore can be raised from the mine; the sun shines 
and the rain falls, alike upon just and unjust. The laws of 
nature are the decrees of the Creator. There is written in 
them no recognition of any right save that of labor; and in 
them is written broadly and clearly the equal right of all 


802 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


men to the use and enjoyment of nature; to apply to her by 
their exertions, and to receive and possess her reward. 
Hence, as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor 
in production is the only title to exclusive possession. 

2d. This right of ownership that springs from labor ex- 
cludes the possibility of any other right of ownership. If 
aman be rightfully entitled to the produce of his labor, 
then no one can be rightfully entitled to the ownership of 
anything which is not the produce of his labor, or the labor 
of some one else from whom the right has passed to him. 
If production give to the producer the right to exclu- 
Sive possession and enjoyment, there can rightfully be no 
exclusive possession and enjoyment of anything not the 
production of labor, and the recognition of private property 
in land isa wrong. Yor the right to the produce of labor 
cannot be enjoyed without the right to the free use of the 
opportunities offered by nature, and to admit the right of 
property in these is to deny the right of property in the 
produce of labor. When non-producers can claim as rent 
a portion of the wealth created by producers, the right of 
the producers to the fruits of their labor is to that extent 
denied. 

There is no escape from this position. To affirm that a 
man can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in his own 
labor when embodied in material things, is to deny that any 
one can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in land. To 
affirm the rightfulness of property in land, is to affirm a 
claim which has no warrant in nature, as against a claim 
founded in the organization of man and the laws of the 
material universe. 

What most prevents the realization of the injustice of 
private property in land is the habit of including all the 
things that are made the subject of ownership in one cate- 
gory, as property, or, if any distinction is made, drawing 
the line, according to the unphilosophical distinction of the 
lawyers, between personal property and real estate, or 
things movable and things immovable. The real and 
natural distinction is between things which are the produce 


Chap. 1. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 303 


of labor and things which are the gratuitous offerings of 
nature; or, to adopt the terms of political economy, between 
wealth and land. 

These two classes of things are in essence and relations 

widely different, and to class them together as property is 
to confuse all thought when we come to consider the jus- 
tice or the injustice, the right or the wrong of property. 
, Ahouse and the lot on which it stands are alike property, 
as being the subject of ownership, and are alike classed by 
the lawyers as real estate. Yet in nature and relations 
they differ widely. The one is produced by human labor, 
and belongs to the class in political economy styled wealth. 
The other is a part of nature, and belongs to the class in 
political economy styled land. 

The essential character of the one class of things is 
that they embody labor, are brought into being by human 
exertion, their existence or non-existence, their increase or 
diminution, depending onman. The essential character of 
the other class of things is that they do not embody labor, 
and exist irrespective of human exertion and irrespective 
of man; they are the field or environment in which man 
finds himself; the storehouse from which his needs must 
be supplied, the raw material upon which, and the forces 
with which alone his labor can act. 

The moment this distinction is realized, that moment is 
it seen that the sanction which natural justice gives to one 
species of property is denied to the other; that the right- 
fulness which attaches to individual property in the prod- 
uce of labor implies the wrongfulness of individual prop- 
erty in land; that, whereas the recognition of the one places 
all men upon equal terms, securing to each the due reward 
of his labor, the recognition of the other is the denial of 
the equal rights of men, permitting those who do not labor 
to take the natural reward of those who do. 

Whatever may be said for the institution of private prop- 
erty in land, it is therefore plain that it cannot be defended 
on the score of justice. : 

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear 


304 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book ViL 


as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right pro- 
claimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot sup- 
pose that some men have a right to be in this -yorld and 
others no right. 

If we are all here by the equal permission of the Creator, 
we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his 
bounty—with an equal right to the use of all that nature so 
impartially offers.* This is a right which is natural and in- 
alienable; it is a right which vests in every human being as 
he enters the world, and which during his continuance in 
the world can be limited only by the equal rights of others. 
There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in land. 
There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a 
grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all existing men 
were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they could 
not grant away the right of those who follow them. For 
what are we but tenants for a day? Have we made the 
earth, that we should determine the rights of those who 
after us shall tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who 
created the earth for man and man for the earth, has en- 
tailed it upon all the generations of the children of men by 
a decree written upon the constitution of all things—a de- 
eree which no human action can bar and no prescription 
determine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or pos- 
session ever so long, natural justice can recognize no right 
in one man to the possession and enjoyment of land that is 
not equally the right of all his fellows. Though his titles 
have been acquiesced in by generation after generation, to 


* In saying that private property in land can, in the ultimate analysis, only be 
justified on the theory that some men have a better right to existence than others, [ 
am only stating what the advocates of the existing system have themselves perceived. 
What gave to Malthus his popularity among the ruling classes--what caused his illogical 
bcok to be received as a new revelation, induced sovereigns to send him decorations, 
and the meanest rich man in England to propose to give him a living, was the fact that 
he furnished a plausible reason for the assumption that some have a better right to 
existence than others—an assumption which is necessary for the justification of private 
property in land, and which Malthus clearly states in the declaration that the tendency 
of population is constantly to bring into the world human beings for whom nature 
refuses to provide, and who consequently ‘‘ have not the slightest right to any share in 
the existing store of the necessaries of life;’ whom she tells as interlopers to begone, 
“and does not hesitate to extort by force obedience to her mandates,” employing for 
that purpose ‘‘ hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect of infantine 
life, prostitution and syphilis.” And to-day this Malthusian doctrine is the ultimate 
defense upon which those who justify private property in land fall back. In no other 
way can it be logically defended. 


Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 300 


the landed estates of the Duke of Westminster the poorest 
child that is born in London to-day has as much right as 
has his eldest son.* Though the sovereign people of the 
State of New York consent to the landed possessions of the 
Astors, the puniest infant that comes wailing into the world 
in the squalidest room of the most miserable tenement 
house; becomes at that moment seized of an equal right 
with the millionaires. And it is robbed if the right is 
denied. 

Our previous conclusions, irresistible in themselves, thus 
stand approved by the highest and final test. Translated 
from terms-of political economy into terms of ethics they 
show a wrong as the source of the evils which increase as 
material progress goes on. 

The masses of men, who in the midst of abundance 
suffer want; who, clothed with political freedom, are con- 
demned to the wages of slavery; to whose toil labor-saving 
inventions bring no relief, but rather seem to rob them of 
a privilege, instinctively feel that ‘‘there is something 
wrong.” And they are right. 

The wide-spreading social evils which everywhere oppress 
men amid an advancing civilization, spring from a great 
primary wrong—the appropriation, as the exclusive property 
of some men, of the land on which and from which all 
must hve. From this fundamental injustice flow all the in-* 
justices which distort and endanger modern development, 
which condemn the producer of wealth to poverty and 
pamper the non-producer in luxury, which rear the tene- 
ment house with the palace, plant the brothel behind the 
church, and compel us to build prisons as we open new 
schools. 

There is nothing strange or inexplicable in the phenom- 


* This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and enjoyment of land is so ap- 
parent that it has been recognized by men wherever force or habit has not blunted 
first perceptions. To give but one instance: The white settlers of New Zealand found 
themselves unable to get from the Maoris what the latter considered a complete title 
to land, because, although a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still 
claim with every new child born among them an additional payment on the ground 
that they had only parted with their own rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. 
The government was obliged to step in and settle the matter by buying land for a tribal 
gnnuity, in which every child that is born aequires a share, 


14 


306 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


ena that are now perplexing the world. It is not that 
material progress is not in itself a good; itis not that na- 
ture has called into being children for whom she has failed 
to provide; it is not that the Creator has left on natural 
laws a taint of injustice at which even the human mind re- 
volts, that material progress brings such bitter fruits. That 
amid our highest civilization. men faint and die with want is 
not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice 
of man. Vice and misery, poverty and pauperism, are not 
the legitimate results of increase of population and indus- 
trial development; they only follow increase of population 
and industrial development because land is treated as 
private property—they are the direct and necessary results 
of the violation of the supreme law of justice, involved in 
giving to some men the exclusive possession of that which 
nature provides for all men. 

The recognition of individual proprietorship of land is 
the denial of the natural rights of other individuals—it is 
a wrong which must show itself in the inequitable division 
of wealth. Foras labor cannot produce without the use of 
land, the denial of the equal right to the use of land is 
necessarily the denial of the right of labor to its own 
produce. If one man can command the land upon which 
others must labor, he can appropriate the produce of their 
labor as the price of his permission to labor. The funda- 
mental law of nature, that her enjoyment by man shall be 
consequent upon his exertion, is thus violated. The one 
receives without producing; the others produce without re- 
ceiving. The one:is unjustly enriched; the others are 
robbed. To this fundamental wrong we have traced the 
unjust distribution of wealth which is separating modern 
society into the very rich and the very poor. It is the con- 
tinuous increase of rent—the price that labor is compelled 
- to pay for the use of land, which strips the many of the 
wealth they justly earn, to pile it up in the hands of the few, 
who do nothing to earn it. 

Why should they who suffer from this injustice hesitate 
for one moment to sweep it away? Who are the land 


Chap. L. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 307 


holders that they should thus be permitted to reap where 
they have not sown? 

Consider for a moment the utter absurdity of the titles 
by which we permit to be gravely passed from John Doe 
to Richard Roe the right to exclusively possess the earth, 
giving absolute dominion as against all others. In Calh- 
fornia our land titles go back to the Supreme Government 
of Mexico, who took from the Spanish King, who took 
from the Pope, when he by a stroke of the pen divided 
lands yet to be discovered between the Spanish or Portu- 
euese—or if you please they rest upon conquest. In the 
Eastern States they go back to treaties with Indians and 
grants from English Kings; in Louisiana to the Govern- 
ment of France; in Florida to the Government of Spain; 
while in England they go back to the Norman conquerors. 
Everywhere, not to a right which obliges, but to a force 
which compels. And when a title rests but on force, no 
complaint can be made when force annuls it. Whenever 
the people, having the power, choose to annul those titles, 
no objection can be made in the name of justice. There 
have existed men who had the power to hold or to give ex- 
clusive possession of portions of the earth’s surface, but 
when and where did there exist the human being who had 
the right? 

The right to exclusive ownership of anything of human 
production is clear. No matter how many the hands 
through which it has passed, there was, at the beginning of 
the line, human labor—some one who having procured or 
produced it by his exertions, had to it a clear title as against 
all the rest of mankind, and which could justly pass from, 
one to another by sale or gift. But at the end of what string 
of conveyances or grants can be shown or supposed a like 
title to any part of the material universe? ‘To improve- 
ments such an original title can be shown; but it is a title 
only to the improvements, and not to the land itself. If I 
clear a forest, drain a swamp, or fill a morass, all I can 
justly claim is the value given by these exertions. They 
give me no right to the land itself, no claim other than to 


308 | JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


my equal share with every other member of the community 
in the value which is added to it by the growth of the 
community. 

But it will be said: There are improvements which in 
time become indistinguishable from the land itself! Very 
well; then the title to the improvements becomes blended 
with the title to the land; the individual right is lost in the 
common right. It is the greater that swallows up the less, 
not the less that swallows up the greater. Nature does not 
proceed from man, but man from nature, and it is into the 
bosom of nature that he and all his works must return 
again. 

Yet, it will be said: As every man has a right to the use 
and enjoyment of nature, the man who is using land must 
be permitted the exclusive right to its use in order that he 
may get the full benefit of his labor. But there is no diffi- 
culty in determining where the individual right ends and 
the common right begins. A delicate and exact test is 
supplied by value, and with its aid there is no difficulty, no 
matter how dense population may become, in determining 
and securing the exact rights of each, the equal rights of 
all. The value of land, as we have seen, is the price of mo- 
nopoly. It is not the absolute, but the relative, capability of 
land that determines its value. No matter what may be its 
intrinsic qualities, land that is no better than other land 
which may be had for the using, can have no value. And 
the value of land always measures the difference between it 
and the best land that may be had for the using. Thus, 
the value of land expresses in exact and tangible form the 
right of the community in land held by an individual; and 
rent expresses the exact amount which the individual 
should pay to the community to satisfy the equal rights of 
all other members of the community. Thus, if we concede 
to priority of possession the undisturbed use of land, con- 
fiscating rent for the benefit of the community, we recon- 
cile the fixity of tenure which is necessary for improvement 
with a full and complete recognition of the equal rights of 
all to the use of land. 


Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 309 


As for the deduction of a complete and exclusive individ- 
ual right to land from priority of occupation, that is, if pos- 
sible, the most absurd ground on which land ownership can 
be defended. Priority of occupation give exclusive and 
perpetual title to the surface of a globe on which, in the or- 
der of nature, countless generations succeed each other! 
Had the men of the last generation any better right to the 
use of this world than we of this? or the men of a hundred 
years ago? or of a thousand years ago? Had the mound- 
builders, or the cave-dwellers, the contemporaries of the 
mastodon and the three-toed horse, or the generations still 
further back, who, in dim sons that we can only think of 
as geologic periods, followed each other on the earth we 
now tenant for our little day? 

Has the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back 
all the chairs and claim that none of the other guests shall 
partake of the food provided, except as they make terms 
with him? Does the first man who presents a ticket at the 
door of a theater and passes in, acquire by his priority the 
right to shut the doors and have the performance go on for 
him alone? Does the first passenger who enters a rail- 
road car obtain the right to scatter his baggage over all the 
seats and compel the passengers who come in after him to 
stand up? 

The cases are perfectly analogous. We arrive and we 
depart, guests at a banquet continually spread, spectators 
and participants in an entertainment where there is room 
for all who come; passengers from station to station, on an 
orb that whirls through space—our rights to take and pos- 
sess cannot be exclusive; they must be bounded everywhere 
by the equal rights of others. Just as the passenger in a 
railroad car may spread himself and his baggage over as 
many seats as he pleases, until other passengers come in, s¢ 
may a settler take and use as much land as he chooses, un: 
til it is needed by others—a fact which is shown by the 
land acquiring a value—when his right must be curtailed 
by the equal rights of the others, and no priority of appro- 
priation can give a right which will bar these equal rights 


310 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V11. 


of others. If this were not the case, then by priority of 
appropriation one man could acquire and could transmit to 
whom he pleased, not merely the exclusive right to 160 
acres, or to 640 acres, but to a whole township, a whole 
State, a whole continent. 

And to this manifest absurdity does the recognition of 
individual right to land come when carried to its ultimate— 
that any one human being, could he concentrate in himself 
the individual rights to the land of any country, could expel 
therefrom all the rest of its inhabitants ; ; and could he thus 
concentrate the individual rights to the whole surface of 
the globe, he alone of all the teeming population of the 
earth would have the right to live. 

And what upon this supposition would occur is, upon a 
smaller scale, realized in actual fact. The territorial lords 
of Great Britain, to whom grants of land have given the 
“white parasols and elephants mad with pride,” have over 
and over again expelled from large districts the native pop- 
ulation, whose ancestors had lived on the land from imme- 
morial times—driven them off to emigrate, to become 
paupers, or to starve. And on uncultivated tracts of land 
in the new State of California may be seen the blackened 
chimneys of homes from which settlers have been driven 
by force of laws which ignore natural right, and great 
stretches of land which might be populous are desolate, be- 
cause the recognition of exclusive ownership has put it in 
the power of one human creature to forbid his fellows from 
using it. The comparative handful of proprieturs who own 
the surface of the British Islands would be only doing what 
English law gives them full power to do, and what many 
of them have done on a smaller scale already, were they to 
exclude the millions of British people from their native 
islands. And such an exclusion, by which a few hundred 
thousand should at will banish thirty million people from 
their native country, while it would be more striking, would 
not be a whit more repugnant to natural right than the 
spectacle now presented, of the vast body of the British 
people being compelled to pay such enormous sums to a 


Chap. I. INJUSTICE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 311 


few of their number for the privilege of being permitted to 
live upon and use the land which they so fondly call their 
own; which is endeared to them by memories so tender 
and so glorious, and for which they are held in duty bound, 
if need be, to spill their blood and lay down their lives. 

I only refer to the British Islands, because, land owner- 
ship being more concentrated there, they afford a more 
striking illustration of what private property in land neces 
sarily involves. ‘‘To whomsoever the soil at any time 
belongs, to him belong the fruits of it,” is a truth that 
becomes more and more apparent as population becomes 
denser and invention and improvement add to productive 
power; but it is everywhere a truth—as much in our new 
States, as in the British Islands or by the banks of the 
Indus. 


CHAPTER II 


THE ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF 
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND. 


If chattel slavery be unjust, then is private property in 
land unjust. : 

For, let the circumstances be what they may—the own- 
ership of land will always give the ownership of men, to a 
degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial) for the 
use of land. This is but a statement in different form of 
the law of rent. 

And when that necessity is absolute—when starvation is 
the alternative to the use of land, then does the ownership 
of men involved in the ownership of land become absolute. | 

Place one hundred men on an island from which there is 
no escape, and whether you make one of these men the ab- 
solute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner 
of the soil of the island, will make no difference either to 
him or to them. | 

In the one case, as the other, the one will be the abso- 
lute master of the ninety-nine—his power extending even 
to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission to 
live upon the island would be to force them into the sea. 

Upon a larger scale, and through more complex relations, 
the same cause must operate in the same way and to the 
same end—the ultimate result, the enslavement of labor- 
ers, becoming apparent just as the pressure increases 
which compels them to live on and from land which is 
treated as the exclusive property of others. Take a country 
in which the soilis divided among a number of proprietors, 
instead of being in the hands,of one, and in which, as in 
modern production, the capitalist has been specialized from 
the laborer, and manufactures and exchange, in all their 


Chap. 11. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 313 


many branches, have been separated from agriculture. 
Though less direct and obvious, the relations between the 
owners of the soil and the laborers will, with increase of 
population and the improvement of the arts, tend to the 
same absolute mastery on the one hand and the same abject 
helplessness on the other, as in the case of the island we 
have supposed. Rent will advance, while wages will fall 
Of the aggregate produce, the land owner will get a con- 
stantly increasing, the laborer a constantly diminishing 
share. Just as removal to cheaper land becomes difficult 
or impossible, laborers, no matter what they produce, will 
be reduced to a bare living, and the free competition 
among them, where land is monopolized, will force them to 
a condition which, though they may be mocked with the 
titles and insignia of freedom, will be virtually that of 
slavery. 

There is nothing strange in the fact that, in spite 
of the enormous increase in productive power which this 
century has witnessed, and which is still going on, the 
wages of labor in the lower and wider strata of industry 
should everywhere tend to the wages of slavery—just 
enough to keep the laborer in working condition. For the 
ownership of the land on which and from which a man 
must live, is virtually the ownership of the man himself, 
and in acknowledging the right of some individuals to the 
exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn 
other individuals to slavery as fully and as completely as 
though we had formally made them chattels. 

In a simpler form of society, where production chiefly 
consists in the direct application of labor to the soil, the 
slavery that is the necessary result of according to some the 
exclusive right to the soil from which all must live, is 
plainly seen in helotism, in villeinage, in serfdom. 

Chattel slavery originated in the capture of prisoners in 
war, and, though it has existed to some extent in every 
part of the globe, its area has been small, its effects trivial, 
as compared with the forms of slavery which have origi- 
nated in the appropriation of land. No people as a mass 


ol4 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY, Book V1, 


have ever been reduced to chattel slavery to men of their 
own race, nor yet on any large scale has any people ever 
been reduced to slavery of this kind by conquest. The 
general subjection of the many to the few, which we meet 
with wherever society has reached a certain development, 
has resulted from the appropriation of land as individual 
property. Itis the ownership of the soil that everywhere 
gives the ownership of the men that live upon it. It is 
slavery of this kind to which the enduring pyramids and 
the colossal monuments of Egypt yet bear witness, and of 
the institution of which we have, perhaps, a vague tradi- 
tion in the biblical story of the famine during which the 
Pharaoh purchased up the lands of the people. It was 
slavery of this kind to which, in the twilight of history, the 
conquerors of Greece reduced the original inhabitants of 
that peninsula, transforming them into helots by making 
them pay rent for their lands. It was the growth of the 
latifundia, or great landed estates, which transmuted the 
population of ancient Italy, from a race of hardy husband- 
men, whose robust virtues conquered the world, into a race 
of cringing bondsmen; it was the appropriation of the land 
as the absolute property of their chieftains which gradu- 
ally turned the descendants of free and equal Gallic, Teu- 
tonic and Hunnish warriors into coloni and villains, and 
which changed the independent burghers of Sclavonie vil- 
lage communities into the boors of Russia and the serfs of 
Poland; which instituted the feudalism of China and 
Japan, as well as that of Hurope, and which made the High 
Chiefs of Polynesia the all but absolute masters of their 
fellows. How it came to pass that the Aryan shepherds 
and warriors who, as comparative philology tells us, 
descended from the common birth-place of the Indo- 
Germanic race into the lowlands of India, were turned into 
the suppliant and cringing Hindoo, the Sanscrit verse which 
I have before quoted gives us a hint. The white parasols 
and the elephants mad with pride of the Indian Rajah are 
the flowers of grants of land. And could we find the key 
to the records of the long-buried civilizations that le en- 


Chap. IT. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 815 


tombed in the gigantic ruins of Yucatan and Guatemala, 
telling at once of the pride of a ruling class and the un- 
requited toil to which the masses were condemned, we 
should read, in all human probability, of a slavery imposed 
upon the great body of the people through the appropria- 
tion of the land as the property of a few—of another illus- 
tration of the universal truth that they who possess the 
Jand are masters of the men who dwell upon it. 

The necessary relation between labor and land, the abso- 
lute power which the ownership of land gives over men 
who cannot live but by using it, explains what is otherwise 
inexplicable—the growth and persistence of institutions, 
manners, and ideas so utterly repugnant to the natural 
sense of liberty and equality. 

When the idea of individual ownership, which so justly 
and naturally attaches to things of human production, is ex- 
tended to land, all the rest is a mere matter of development. 
The strongest and most cunning easily acquire a superior 
share in this species of property, which is to be had, not 
by production, but by appropriation, and in becoming 
lords of the land they become necessarily lords of their 
fellow-men. The ownership of land is the basis of aris- 
tocracy. It was not nobility that gave land, but the pos- 
session of land that gave nobility. All the enormous 
privileges of the nobility of medieval Hurope flowed from 
their position as the owners of the soil. The simple prin- 
ciple of the ownership of the soil produced, on the one 
side, the lord, on the other, the vassal—the one having all 
rights, the other none. The right of the lord to the soil 
acknowledged and maintained, those who lived upon it 
could only do so upon his terms. The manners and con- 
ditions of the times made those terms include services and 
servitudes, as well as rents in produce or money, but the 
essential thing that compelled them was the ownership 
of land. This power exists wherever the ownership of 
land exists, and can be brought out wherever the competi- 
tion for the use of land is great enough to enable the 
landlord to make his own terms. The English land owner 


316 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


of to-day has, in the law which recognizes his exclusive 
right to the land, essentially all the power which his pre- 
decessor the feudal baron had. He might command rent 
in services or servitudes. He might compel his tenants 
to dress themselves in a particular way, to profess a partic- 
ular religion, to send their children to a particular school, 
to submit their differences to his decision, to fall upon 
their knees when he spoke to them, to follow him around. 
dressed in his livery, or to sacrifice to him female honor, 
if they would prefer these things to being driven off his land. 
He could demand in short any terms on which men would 
still consent to live on his land, and the law could not pre- 
vent him so long as it did not qualify his ownership, for 
comphance with them would assume the form of a free con- 
tract or voluntary act. And English landlords do exercise 
such of these powers as in the manners of the times they 
care to. Having shaken off the obligation of providing 
for the defense of the country, they no longer need the 
military service of their tenants, and the possession of 
wealth and power being now shown in other ways than by 
long trains of attendants, they-no longer care for personal 
service. But they habitually control the votes of their 
tenants, and dictate to them in many little ways. That 
‘‘right reverend father in God,” Bishop Lord Plunkett, 
evicted a number of his poor Irish tenants because they 
would not send their children to Protestant Sunday schools; 
and to that Earl of Leitrim for whom Nemesis tarried so 
long before she sped the bullet of an assassin, even darker 
crimes are imputed; while, at the cold promptings of greed, 
cottage after cottage has been pulled down and family after 
family forced into the roads. The principle that permits 
this is the same principle that in ruder times and a simpler 
social state enthralled the great masses of the common 
people and placed such a wide gulf between noble and 
peasant. Where the peasant was made a serf, it was 
simply by forbidding him to leave the estate on which he 
was born, thus artificially producing the condition we sup- 
posed on the island. In sparsely settled countries this is 


Chap. II. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 317 


necessary to produce absolute slavery, but where land is 
fully occupied, competition may produce substantially the 
same conditions. Between the condition of the rack- 
rented Irish peasant and the Russian serf, the advantage 
was in many things on the side of the serf. The serf did 
not starve. 

Now, as I think I have conclusively proved, it is the same 
cause which has in every age degraded and enslaved the 
laboring masses, that is working in the civilized world to- 
day. Personal liberty—that is to say, the liberty to move 
about—is everywhere conceded, while of political and 
legal inequality there are in the United States no vestiges, 
and in the most backward civilized countries but few. 
But the great cause of inequality remains, and is manifest- 
ing itself in the unequal distribution of wealth. The 
essence of slavery is that it takes from the laborer all he 
produces save enough to support an animal existence, and 
to this minimum the wages of free labor, under existing 
conditions, unmistakably tend. Whatever be the increase 
of productive power, rent steadily tends to swallow up the 
gain, and more than the gain. 

Thus the condition of the masses in every civilized 
country is, or is tending to become, that of virtual slavery 
under the forms of freedom. And it is probable that of all 
kinds of slavery this is the most cruel and relentless. For 
the laborer is robbed of the produce of his labor and com- 
pelled to toil for a mere subsistence; but his taskmasters, 
instead of human beings, assume the form of imperious 
necessities. Those to whom his labor is rendered and from 
whom his wages are received are often driven in their turn— 
contact between the laborers and the ultimate beneficiaries 
of their labor is sundered, and individuality is lost. The 
direct responsibility of master to slave, a responsibility 
which exercises a softening influence upon the great ma- 
jority of men, does not arise; it is not one human being 
who seems to drive another to unremitting and ill-requited 
toil, but ‘‘the inevitable laws of supply and demand,”’ for 
which no one in particular is responsible. The maxims of 


318 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


Cato the Censor—maxims which were regarded with ab- 
horrence even in an age of cruelty and universal slave- 
holding—that after as much work as possible is obtained 
from a slave he should be turned out to die, become the 
common rule; and even the selfish interest which prompts 
the master to look after the comfort and well-being of the 
slave is lost. Labor has become a commodity, and the 
laborer a machine. There are no masters and slaves, no 
owners and owned, but only buyers and sellers. The 
higeling of the market takes the place of every other senti- 
ment. 

When the slaveholders of the South looked upon the 
condition of the free laboring poor in the most advanced 
civilized countries, it is no wonder that they easily per- 
suaded themselves of the divine institution of slavery. That 
the field hands of the South were as a class better fed, 
better lodged, better clothed; that they had less care and 
more of the amusements and enjoyments of life than the 
agricultural laborers of England there can be no doubt; and 
even in the Northern cities, visiting slaveholders might see 
and hear of things impossible under what they called their 
organization of labor. In the Southern States, during the 
days of slavery, the master who would have compelled his 
negroes to work and live as large classes of free white men 
and women are compelled in free countries to work and live, 
would have been deemed infamous, and if public opinion 
had not restrained him, his own selfish interest in the main- 
tenance of the health and strength of his chattels would. 
But in London, New York, and Boston, among people who 
have given, and would give again, money and blood to free 
the slave, where no one could abuse a beast in public with- 
out arrest and punishment, barefooted and ragged children 
may be seen running around the streets even in the winter 
time, and in squalid garrets and noisome cellars women 
work away their lives for wages that fail to keep them in 
proper warmth and nourishment. Is it any wonder that to 
the slaveholders of the South the demand for the abolition 
of slavery seemed like the cant of hypocrisy ? 


Chap. LI. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. d19 


And now that slavery has been abolished, the planters of 
the South find they have sustained no loss. Their owner- 
ship of the land upon which the freedmen must live gives 
them practically as much command of labor as before, 
while they are relieved of responsibility, sometimes very 
expensive. The negroes as yet have the alternative of emi- 
erating, and a great movement of that kind seems now 
about commencing, but as population increases and land 
becomes dear, the planters will get a greater proportionate 
share of the earnings of their laborers than they did under 
the system of chattel slavery, and the laborers a less share 
—for under the system of chattel slavery the slaves always 
got at least enough to keep them in good physical health, 
but in such countries as England there are large classes of 
laborers who do not get that.* 

The influences which wherever there is personal relation 
between master and slave, slip in to modify chattel slavery, 
and to prevent the master from exerting to its fullest extent 
his power over the slave, also showed themselves in the ruder 
forms of serfdom that characterized the earlier periods of 
European development, and aided by religion, and, perhaps, 
as in chattel slavery, by the more enlightened but still 
selfish interests of the lord, and hardening into custom, uni- 
versally fixed a limit to what the owner of the land could 
extort from the serf or peasant, so that the competition of 
men without means of existence bidding against each other 
for access to the means of existence, was nowhere suffered 
to go to its full length and exert its full power of depriva- 
tion and degradation. The helots of Greece, the metayers 
of Italy, the serfs of Russia and Poland, the peasants of feu- 
dal Europe, rendered to their landlords a fixed proportion 
either of their produce or their labor, and were not gener- 
ally squeezed past that point. But the influences which 
thus stepped in to modify the extortive power of land 


* One of the anti-slavery agitators (Col. J. A. Collins) on a visit to England addressed 
a large audience in a Scotch manufacturing town, and wound upas he had been used to 
in the United States, by giving the ration which in the slave codes of some of the States 
fixed the minimum of maintenance for a slave. He quickly discovered that to many of 
his hearers it was an anti-climax. 


320 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


ownership, and which may still be seen on English estates 
where the landlord and his family deem it their duty to send. 
medicines and comforts to the sick and infirm, and to look 
after the well-being of their cottagers, just as the Southern 
planter was accustomed to look after his negroes, are lost 
in the more refined and less obvious form which serfdom 
assumes in the more complicated processes of modern pro- 
duction, which separates so widely and by so many inter- 
mediate gradations the individual whose labor is appropri- 
ated from him who appropriates it, and makes the relations 
between the members of the two classes not direct and 
particular but indirect and general. In modern society, com- 
petition has free play to force from the laborer the very 
utmost he can give, and with what terrific force it is acting 
may be seen in the condition of the lowest class in the 
centers of wealth and industry. That the condition of this 
lowest class is not yet more general, is to be attributed to 
the great extent of fertile land which has hitherto been 
open on this continent, and which has not merely afforded 
an escape for the increasing population of the older sec- 
tions of the Union, but has greatly relieved the pressure in 
Europe—in one country, Ireland, the emigration having 
been so great as actually to reduce the population. This 
avenue of relief cannot last forever. It is already fast 
closing up, and as it closes, the pressure must become 
harder and harder. 

It is not without reason that the wise crow in the 
Ramayana, the crow Bushanda, ‘‘ who has lived in every 
part of the universe and knows all events from the begin- 
nings of time,’ declares that, though contempt of worldly 
advantages is necessary to supreme felicity, yet the keenest 
pain possible is inflicted by extreme poverty. The poverty 
to which in advancing civilization great masses of men are 
condemned, is not the freedom from distraction and tempta- 
tion which sages have sought and philosophers have praised; 
it is a degrading and embruting slavery, that cramps the 
higher nature, dulls the finer feelings, and drives men by 
its pain to acts which the brutes would refuse. It is inte 


Chap. 11. ENSLAVEMENT OF LABORERS. 321 


this helpless, hopeless poverty, that crushes manhood and 
destroys womanhood, that robs even childhood of its inno- 
cence and joy, that the working classes are being driven 
by a force which acts upon them like a resistless and un- | 
pitying machine. The Boston collar manufacturer who 
pays his girls two cents an hour may commiserate their 
condition, but he, as they, is governed by the law of com- 
petition, and cannot pay more and carry on his business, 
for exchange is not governed by sentiment. And so, 
through all intermediate gradations, up to those who re- 
ceive the earnings of labor without return, in the rent of 
land, it is the inexorable laws of supply and demand, a 
power with which the individual can no more quarrel or 
dispute than with the winds and the tides, that seem to 
press down the lower classes into the slavery of want. 

But in reality, the cause is that which always has and 
always must result in slavery—the monopolization by some 
of what nature has designed for all. 

Our boasted freedom necessarily involves slavery, so long 
as we recognize private property in land. Until that is 
abolished, Declarations of Independence and Acts of 
Emancipation are in vain. So long as one man can claim 
the exclusive ownership of the land from which other men 
must live, slavery will exist, and as material progress goes 
on, must grow and deepen ! 

This—and in previous chapters of this book we have 
traced the process, step by step—is what is going on in the 
civilized world to-day. Private ownership of land is the 
nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill- 
stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the 
working classes are being ground. 


25 ws BN ed A Ss al 
CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 


The truth is, and from this truth there can be no escape, 
that there is and can be no just title to an exclusive pos- 
session of the soil, and that private property in land is a 
bold, bare, enormous wrong, like that of chattel slavery. 

The majority of men in civilized communities do not 
recognize this, simply because the majority of men do not 
think. With them whatever is, is right, until its wrongful- 
ness has been frequently pointed out, and in general they 
are ready to crucify whoever first attempts this. 

Butit is impossible for any one to study political econ- 
omy, even as at present taught, or to think at all upon the 
production and distribution of wealth, without seeing that 
property in land differs essentially from property in things 
of human production, and that it has no warrant in ab- 
stract justice. 

This is admitted either expressly or tacitly in every 
standard work on political economy, but in general merely 
by vague admission or omission. Attention is in general 
called away from the truth, as a lecturer on moral philosophy 
in a slave-holding community might call away attention 
from too close a consideration of the natural rights of men, 
and private property in land is accepted without comment, 
as an existing fact, or is assumed to be necessary to the 
proper use of land and the existence of the civilized state. 

The examination through which we have passed has 
proved conclusively that private property in land cannot be 
justified on the ground of utility—that, on the contrary, it is 
the great cause to which are to be traced the poverty, 
misery, and degradation, the social disease and the political 
weakness which are showing themselves so menacingly 


Chap. 11f, CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 323 


amid advancing civilization. Expediency, therefore, joins 
justice in demanding that we abolish it. | 

When expediency thus joins justice in demanding that 
we abolish an institution that has no broader base or 
stronger ground than a mere municipal regulation, what 
reason can there be for hesitation? 

The consideration that seems to cause hesitation, even on 
the part of those who see clearly that land by right is com- 
mon property, is the idea that having permitted land to be 
treated as private property for so long, we should in abol- 
ishing it be doing a wrong to those who have been suffered 
to base their calculations upon its permanence; that having 
permitted land to be held as rightful property, we should by 
the resumption of common rights be doing injustice to 
those who have purchased it with what was unquestion- 
ably their rightful property. Thus, itis held that if we 
abolish private property in land, justice requires that we 
should fully compensate those who now possess it, as the 
British Government in abolishing the purchase and sale of 
military commissions, felt itself bound to compensate those 
who held commissions which they had purchased in the 
belief that they could sell them again, or as in abolishing 
slavery in the British West Indies $100,000,000 was paid 
the slaveholders. 

Even Herbert Spencer, who in his ‘‘Social Statics” has so 
clearly demonstrated the invalidity of every title by which 
the exclusive possession of land is claimed, gives counte- 
nance to this idea (though it seems to me inconsistently) by 
declaring that to justly estimate and liquidate the claims 
of the present landholders ‘‘ who have either by their own 
acts or by the acts of their ancestors given for their estates 
equivalents of honestly-earned wealth,” to be ‘‘ one of tha 
most intricate problems society will one day have to solve.” 

It is this idea that suggests the proposition, which finds 
advocates in Great Britain, that the Government shall 
purchase at its market price the individual proprietorship 
of the land of the country, and it was this idea which led 
John Stuart Mill, although clearly perceiving the essential 


f 


324 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


injustice of private property in land, to advocate, not a full 
resumption of the land, but only a resumption of accruing 
advantages in the future. His plan was that a fair and 
even liberal estimate should be made of the market value 
of all the land in the kingdom, and that future additions 
to that value, not due to the improvements of the proprietor, 
should be taken by the state. 

To say nothing of the practical difficulties which such 
cumbrous plans involve, in the extension of the functions 
of government which they would require and the corrup- 
tion they would beget, their inherent and essential defect 
les in the impossibility of bridging over by any compro- 
mise the radical difference between wrong and right. Just 
in proportion as the interests of the landholders are con- 
served, just in that proportion must general interests and 
general rights be disregarded, and if landholders are to lose 
nothing of their special privileges, the people at large can 
gain nothing. To buy up individual property rights would 
merely be to give the landholders in another form a claim of 
the same kind and amount that their possession of land 
now gives them; it would be to raise for them by taxation 
the same proportion of the earnings of labor and capital 
that they are now enabled to appropriate in rent. Their 
unjust advantage would be preserved and the unjust disad- 
vantage of the non-landholders would be continued. To 
be sure there would be a gain to the people at large when 
the advance of rents had made the amount which the land- 
holders would take under the present system greater than 
the interest upon the purchase price of the land at present 
rates, but this would be only a future gain, and in the 
meanwhile there would not only be no relief, but the 
burden imposed upon labor and capital for the benefit of 
the present landholders would be much increased. For 
one of the elements in the present market value of land is 
the expectation of future increase of value, and thus, to 
buy up the lands at market rates and pay interest upon the 
purchase money would be to saddle producers not only 
with the payment of actual rent, but with the payment in 


Chap. II]. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 325 


full of speculative rent. Or to put it in another way: The 
land would be purchased at prices calculated upon a lower 
than the ordinary rate of interest (for the prospective in- 
crease in land values always makes the market price of 
land much greater than would be the price of anything else 
yielding the same present return), and interest upon the 
purchase money would be paid at the ordinary rate. Thus, 
not only all that the land yields them now would have to 
be paid the land owners, but a considerably larger amount. 
It would be, virtually, the state taking a perpetual lease 
from the present landholders at a considerable advance 
in rent over what they now receive. For the present the 
state would merely become the agent of the landholders in 
the collection of their rents, and would have to pay over to 
them not only what they received, but considerably more. 

Mr. Mill’s plan for nationalizing the future ‘‘ unearned 
increase in the value of land,” by fixing the present market 
value of all lands and appropriating to the state future 
increase in value, would not add to the injastice of the 
present distribution of wealth, but it would not remedy it. 
Further speculative advance of rent would cease, and in 
the future the people at large would gain the difference 
between the increase of rent and the amount at which that 
increase was estimated in fixing the present value of land, 
in which, of course, prospective, as well as present, value 
is an element. But it would leave, for all the future, one 
class in possession of the enormous advantage over others 
which they now have. All that can be said of this plan is, 
that it might be better than nothing. 

Such inefficient and impracticable schemes may do to 
talk about, where any proposition more efficacious would 
not at present be entertained, and their discussion is a 
hopeful sign, as it shows the entrance of the thin end of 
the wedge of truth. Justice in men’s mouths is cringingly 
humble when she first begins a protest against a time- 
honored wrong, and we, of the English-speaking nations 
still wear the collar of the Saxon thrall, and have been edu- 
cated to look upon the ‘‘ vested rights’? of land owners 


326 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Racks: 


with all the superstitious reverence that ancient Egyptians 
looked upon the crocodile. But when the times are ripe 
for them, ideas grow, even though insignificant in their 
first appearance. One day, the Third Estate covered their 
heads when the King put on his hat. A little while there- 
after, and the head of a son of St. Louis rolled from the 
scaffold. The anti-slavery movement in the United States 
commenced with talk of compensating owners, but when 
four millions of slaves were emancipated, the owners got 
no compensation, nor did they clamor for any. And by the 
time the people of any such country as England or the 
United States are sufficiently aroused to the injustice and 
disadvantages of individual ownership of land to induce 
them to attempt its nationalization, they will be sufficiently 
aroused to nationalize it in a much niore direct and easy way 
than by purchase. They will not trouble themselves about 
compensating the proprietors of land. 

Nor is it right that there should be any concern about 
the proprietors of land, That such a man as John Stuart 
Mill should have attached so much importance to the com- 
pensation of land owners as to have urged the confiscation 
merely of the future increase in rent, is only explainable 
by his acquiescence in the current doctrines that wages are 
drawn from capital and that population constantly tends to 
press upon subsistence. ‘These blinded him as to the full 
effects of the private apprupriation of land. He saw that 
‘‘the claim of the landholder is altogether subordinate to 
the general policy of the state,” and that ‘‘ when private 
property in land is not expedient, it is unjust,’* but, en- 
- tangled in the toils of the Malthusian doctrine, he attrib- 
uted, as he expressly states in a paragraph I have previously 
quoted, the want and suffering that he saw around him to 
“the niggardliness of nature, not to the injustice of man,” 
and thus to him the nationalization of land seemed compara- 
tively a little thing, that could accomplish nothing towards 
the eradication of pauperism and the abolition of want— 


* Principles of Political Economy, Book I, Chap, 2, Sec, 6, 


Chap. 111. OLAIM OF LAND OWNERS TO COMPENSATION. 327 


ends that could only be reached as men learned to repress 
a natural instinct. Great as he was and pure as he was— 
warm heart and noble mind—he yet never saw the true har- 
mony of economic laws, nor realized how from this one 
ereat fundamental wrong flow want and misery, and vice 
and shame. Else he could never have written this sentence: 
“The land of Ireland, the land of every country, belongs 
to the people of that country. The individuals called land 
owners have no right in morality and justice to anything 
but the rent, or compensation for its salable value.” 

In the name of the Prophet—figs! If the land of any 
country belong to the people of that country, what right, 
in morality and justice, have the individuals called land 
owners to the rent? If the land belong to the people, why 
in the name of morality and justice should the people pay 
its salable value for their own? 

Herbert Spencer says:* ‘‘Had we to deal with the parties 
who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we 
might make short work of the matter?” Why not make 
short work of the matter anyhow? Tor this robbery is not 
like the robbery of a horse or a sum of money, that ceases 
with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery, that 
goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the 
produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the prod- 
uce of the present. It is atoll levied upon labor constantly 
and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every 
stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb 
of the steam engine, pay it tribute. It levies upon the 
earnings of the men who, deep under ground, risk their 
jives, and of those who over white surges hang to reeling 
masts; it claims the just reward of the capitalist and the 
fruits of the inventor’s patient effort; it takes little children 
from play and from school, and compels them to work 
before their bones are hard or their muscles are firm; it 
robs the shivering of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, 
of medicine; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and em- 


- 


* Social Statics, page 142, 


828 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


brutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight and ten 
into a single squalid room; it herds like swine agricultural - 
gangs of boys and girls; it fills the gin palace and groggery 
with those who have no comfort in their homes; it makes 
lads who might be useful men candidates for prisons and 
penitentiaries; it fills brothels with girls who might have 
known the pure joy of motherhood; it sends greed and 
all evil passions prowling through society as a hard winter 
drives the wolves to the abodes of men; it darkens faith in 
the human soul, and across the reflection of a just and 
merciful Creator draws the vail of a hard, and blind, and 
cruel fate ! 

It is not merely a robbery in the past; itis a robbery in 
the present—a robbery that deprives of their birthright 
the infants that are now coming into the world! Why 
should we hesitate about making short work of such a sys- 
tem? Because I was robbed yesterday, and the day before, 
and the day before that, is it any reason that I should 
suffer myself to be robbed to-day and to-morrow? any 
reason that I should conclude that the robber has acquired 
a vested right to rob me? © 

If the land belong to the people, why continue to per- 
mit land owners to take the rent, or compensate them in 
any manner for the loss of rent. Consider what rent is. 
It does not arise spontaneously from land; it is due to 
nothing that the land owners have done. It represents a 
value created by the whole community. Let the landholders 
have, if you please, all that the possession of the land 
would give them in the absence of the rest of the community. 
But rent, the creation of the whole community, necessarily 
belongs to the whole community. 

Try the case of the landholders by the maxims of the 
common law by which the rights of man and man are de- 
termined. The common law we are told is the perfection 
of reason, and certainly the land owners cannot complain of 
its decision, for it has been built up by and for land owners. 
Now what does the law allow to the innocent possessor 
when the Jand for which he paid his money is adjudged to 


: 


Chap. 111. CLAIM OF LAND OWNERS 'TO COMPENSATION. 329 


rightfully belong to another? Nothing at all. That he 
purchased in good faith gives him no right or claim what- 
ever. The law does not concern itself with the ‘‘ intricate 
question of compensation’’ to the innocent purchaser. 
The law does not say, as John Stuart Mill says: ‘‘ The 
land belongs to A, therefore B who has thought himself 
the owner has no right to anything but the rent, or com- 
pensation for its salable value.” For that would be 
indeed like a famous fugitive slave case decision in which 
the Court was said to have given the law to the North and 
the nigger to the South. The law simply says, ‘‘ The land 
belongs to A, let the Sheriff put him in possession!’ It 
gives the innocent purchaser of a wrongful title no claim, it 
allows him no compensation. And not only this, it takes 
from him all the improvements that he has in good faith 
made'upon the land. You may have paid a high price for 
land, making every exertion to see that the title is good; 
you may have held it in undisturbed possession for years 
without thought or hint of an adverse claimant; made it 
fruitful by your toil or erected upon it a costly building of 
greater value than the land itself, or a modest home in 
which you hope, surrounded by the fig trees you have 
planted and the vines you have dressed, to pass your de- 
clining days; yet if Quirk, Gammon & Snap can mouse 
out a technical flaw in your parchments or hunt up some 
forgotten heir who never dreamed of his rights, not merely 
the land, but all your improvements, may be taken away 
from you. And not merely that. According to the com- 
mon law, when you have surrendered the land and given up 
your improvements, you may be called upon to account for 
the profits you derived from the land during the time you 
bad it. 

Now if we apply to this case of The People vs. The 
Land Owners the same maxims of justice that have been 
formulated by land owners into law, and are applied every 
day in English and American courts to disputes between 
man and man, we shall not only not think of giving the land- 
holders any compensation for the land, but shall take all 


330 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book. Vit. 


the improvements and whatever else they may have as 
well. 

But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that any one 
else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the people 
resume the ownership of the land. Let the land owners 
retain their improvements and personal property in secure 
possession. 

And in this measure of justice would be no oppression, no 
injury to any class. The great cause of the present un- 
equal distribution of wealth, with the suffering, degradation, 
and waste that it entails, would be swept away. Even 
landholders would share in the general gain. The gain of 
even the large landholders would be areal one. The gain 
of the small landholders would be enormous. for in 
welcoming Justice, men welcome the handmaid of Love. 
Peace and Plenty follow in her train, bringing their good 
gifts, not to some, but to all. 

How true this is, we shall hereafter see. 

If in this chapter I have spoken of justice and expedi- 
ency as if justice were one thing and expediency another, 
it has been merely to meet the objections of those who so 
talk. In justice is the highest and truest expediency. 


CHAPTER IV. 
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 


What more than anything else prevents the realization of 
the essential injustice of private property in land and 
stands in the way of a candid consideration of any proposi- 
tion for abolishing it, is that mental habit which makes 
anything that has long existed seem natural and necessary. 

We are so used to the treatment of land as individual 
property, it is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, man- 
ners, and customs, that the vast majority of people never 
think of questioning it; but look upon it as necessary to 
the use of land. They are unable to conceive, or at least 
it does not enter their heads to conceive, of society as 
existing or as possible without the reduction of land to 
private possession. The first step to the cultivation or im- 
provement of land seems to them to get for it a particular 
owner, and a man’s land is looked on by them as fully and 
as equitably his, to sell, to lease, to give, or to bequeath, 
as his house, his cattle, his goods, or his furniture. The 
‘‘ sacredness of property’ has been preached so constantly 
and effectively, especially by those ‘‘ conservators of an- 
cient barbarism,” as Voltaire styled the lawyers, that most 
people look upon the private ownership of land as the very 
foundation of civilization, and if the resumption of land as 
common property is suggested, think of it at first blush 
either as a chimerical vagary, which never has and never can 
be realized, or as a proposition to overturn society from its 
base and bring about a reversion to barbarism. 

If it were true that land had always been treated as 
private property, that would not prove the justice or neces- 
sity of continuing so to treat it, any more than the 
universal existence of slavery, which might once have been 


832 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


safely affirmed, would prove the justice or necessity of 
making property of human flesh and blood. 

Not long ago, monarchy seemed all but universal, and 
not only the kings but the majority of their subjects really 
believed that no country could get along without a king. 
Yet, to say nothing of America, France now gets along 
without a king; the Queen of England and Empress of 
India has about as much to do with governing her realms as 
the wooden figurehead of a ship has in determining its 
course, and the other crowned heads of Europe sit, meta- 
phorically speaking, upon barrels of nitro-glycerine. 

Something over a hundred years ago, Bishop Butler, 
author of the famous Analogy, declared that ‘‘a constitu- 
tion of civil government without any religious establishment 
is a chimerical project of which there is no example.” As 
for there being no example, he was right. No government 
at that time existed, nor would it have been easy to name 
one that ever had existed, without some sort of an estab- 
lished religion; yet in the United States we have since 
proved by the practice of a century that it is possible for a 
civil government to exist without a state church. 

But while, were it true, that land had always and every- 
where been treated as private property would not prove that 
it should always be so treated, this is not true. On the 
contrary, the common right to land has everywhere been 
primarily recognized, and private ownership has nowhere 
grown up save as the result of usurpation. The primary 
and persistent perceptions of mankind are that all have an 
equal right to land, and the opinion that private property 
in land is necessary to society is but an offspring of ignor- 
ance that cannot look beyond its immediate surroundings— 
an idea of comparatively modern growth, as artificial and 
as baseless as that of the right divine of kings. 

The observations of travelers, the researches of the 
critical historians who within a recent period have done so 
much to reconstruct the forgotten records of the people, 
the investigations of such men as Sir Henry Maine, Emile 
de Laveleye, Professor Nasse of Bonn, and others, into the 


Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 309 
growth of institutions, prove that wherever human society 
has formed, the common right of men to the use of the 
earth has been recognized, and that nowhere has un- 
restricted individual ownership been freely adopted. 
Historically, as ethically, private property in land is rob- 
bery. It nowhere springs from contract; it can nowhere 
be traced to perceptions of justice or expediency; it has 
everywhere had its birth in war and conquest, and in the 
selfish use which the cunning have made of superstition 
and law. 

Wherever we can trace the early history of society, 
whether in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, or in 
Polynesia, land has been considered, as the necessary rela- 
tions which human life has to it would lead to its consider- 
ation—as common property, in which the rights of all who 
had admitted rights were equal. That is to say, that all 
members of the community (all citizens, as we should say) 
had equal rights to the use and enjoyment of the land of 
the community. This recognition of the common right to 
land did not prevent the full recognition of the particular 
and exclusive right in things which are the result of labor, 
nor was it abandoned when the development of agriculture 
had imposed the necessity of recognizing exclusive posses- 
sion of land in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of 
the results of the labor expended in cultivating it. The 
division of land between the industrial units, whether fam- 
ilies, joint families, or individuals, only went as far as was 
necessary for that purpose, pasture and forest lands being 
retained as common, and equality as to agricultural land 
being secured, either by a periodical re-division, as among 
the Teutonic races, or by the prohibition of alienation, as 
in the law of Moses. 

This primary adjustment still exists, in more or less intact 
form, in the village communities of India, Russia, and the 
Sclavonic countries yet, or until recently, subjected to 
Turkish rule; in the mountain cantons of Switzerland; 
among the Kabyles in the north of Africa, and the Kaffirs 
in the south; among the native population of Java, and the 


334 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Haake PIT 


aborigines of New Zealand—that is to say, wherever ex- 
traneous influences have left intact the form of primitive 
social organization. That it everywhere existed has been 
within late years abundantly proved by the researches of 
many independent students and ebservers, and which are 
(to my knowledge) best summarized in the ‘‘ Systems of 
Land Tenures in Various Countries,’ published under 
authority of the Cobden Club, and in M. Emile de Laveleye’s 
‘‘ Primitive Property,” to which I would refer the reader 
who desires to see this truth displayed in detail. 

‘‘ Tn all primitive societies,” says M. de Laveleye, as the 
result of an investigation which leaves no part of the world 
unexplored—“‘‘in all primitive societies, the soil was the 
joint property of the tribes and was subject to periodical 
distribution among all the families, so that all might live 
by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of 
each was thus proportioned to his energy and intelligence; 
no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsist- 
ence, and inequality increasing from generation to genera- 
tion was provided against.” 

If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and that he 
is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, has 
the reduction of land to private ownership become so 
general? 

The causes which have operated to supplant this original 
idea of the equal right to the use of land by the idea of ex- 
clusive and unequal rights may, I think, be everywhere 
vaguely but certainly traced. They are everywhere the 
same which have-led to the denial of equal personal rights 
and the establishment of privileged classes. 

These causes may be summarized as the concentration of 
power in the hands of chieftains and the military class, con- 
sequent on a state of warfare, which enabled them to 
monopolize common lands; the effect of conquest, in re- 
ducing the conquered to a state of predial slavery, and 
dividing their lands among the conquerors, and in dispro- 
portionate share to the chiefs; the differentiation and influ- 
ence of a sacerdotal class, and the differentiation and 


Chap. IV PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. B00 


influence of a class of professional lawyers, whose interests 
were served by the substitution of exclusive, in place of 
common, property in land*—inequality once produced 
always tending to greater inequality, by the law of attrac- 
tion. 

It was the struggle between this idea of equal rights to 
the soil and the tendency to monopolize it in individual 
possession, that caused the internal conflicts of Greece and 
Rome; it was the check given to this tendency—in Greece 
by such institutions as those of Lycurgus and Solon, and 
in Rome by the Licinian Law and subsequent divisions of 
land—that gave to each their days of strength and glory; 
and it was the final triumph of this tendency that destroyed 
both. Great estates ruined Greece, as afterwards ‘‘ great 
estates ruined Italy,’} and as the soil, in spite of the warn- 
ings of great legislators and statesmen, passed finally into 
the possession of a few, population declined, art sank, the 
intellect became emasculate, and the race in which human- 
ity had attained its most splendid development became a 
by-word and reproach among men. 

The idea of absolute individual property in land, which 
modern civilization derived from Rome, reached its full de- 
velopment there in historic times. When the future mis- 
tress of the world first looms up, each citizen had his little 
homestead plot, which was inalienable, and the general do- 
main—‘‘ the corn-land which was of public right’’—was 
subject to common use, doubtless under regulations or cus- 
toms which secured equality, as in the Teutonic mark and 
Swiss allmend. It was from this public domain, con- 
stantly extended by conquest, that the patrician families 
succeeded in carving their great estates. These great 
estates by the power with which the great attracts the less, 
in spite of temporary checks by legal limitation and recur- 
ring divisions, finally crushed out all the small proprietors, 
adding their little patrimonies to the latifundia of the enor- 


* The influence of the lawyers has been very marked in Europe, both on the conti- 
nent and in Great Britain, in destroying all vestiges of the ancient tenure, and substi 
tuting the idea of the Roman law, exclusive ownership. 

+ Latifundia perdidecre Italiam.— Pliny. 


336 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII 


mously rich, while they themselves were forced into the 
slave gangs, became rent-paying colonii, or else were 
driven into the freshly conquered foreign provinces, where 
land was given to the veterans of the legions; or to the 
metropolis, to swell the ranks of the proletariat who had 
nothing to sell but their votes. 

Cesarism, soon passing into an unbridled despotism of 
the Eastern type, was the inevitable political result, and 
the empire, even while it embraced the world, became in 
reality a shell, kept from collapse only by the healthier life 
of the frontiers, where the land had been divided among 
military settlers or the primitive usages longer survived. 
But the latifundia, which had devoured the strength of 
Italy, crept steadily outward, carving the surface of Sicily, 
Africa, Spain, and Gaul into great estates cultivated by 
slaves or tenants. The hardy virtues born of personal in- 
dependence died out, an exhaustive agriculture impover- 
ished the soil, and wild beasts supplanted men, until at 
length, with a strength nurtured in equality, the barbarians 
broke through; Rome perished; and of a civilization once 
so proud nothing was left but ruins. 

Thus came to pass that marvelous thing, which at the 
time of Rome’s grandeur would have seemed as impossible 
as it seems now tous that the Comanches or Flatheads should 
conquer the United States, or the Laplanders should deso- 
late Europe. The fundamental cause is to be sought in the 
tenure of land. On the one hand, the denial of the com- 
mon right to land had resulted in decay; on the other, 
equality gave strength. ; 

“Freedom,” says M. de Laveleye (‘‘ Primitive Prop- 
erty,” p. 116), ‘‘ freedom, and, as a consequence, the owner- 
ship of an undivided share of the common property, to 
which the head of every family in the clan was equally en- 
titled, were in the German village essential rights. This 
system of absolute equality impressed a remarkable char- 
acter on the individual, which explains how small bands of 
barbarians made themselves masters of the Roman Empire, 
in spite of its skillful administration, its perfect centraliza- 


Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 337 


tion and its civil law, which has preserved the name of 
written reason.” 

It was, on the other hand, that the heart was eaten out 
of that great empire. ‘‘ Rome perished,” says Professor 
Seeley, ‘‘ from the failure of the crop of men.” 

In his leciures on the ‘‘ History of Civilization in Eu- 
rope,” and more elaborately in his lectures on the ‘‘ History 
of Civilization in France,” M. Guizot has vividly described 
the chaos that in Europe succeeded the fall of the Roman 
Empire—a chaos which, as he says, ‘“‘ carried all things 
in its bosom,” and from which the structure of modern 
society was slowly evolved. It is a picture which cannot be 
compressed into a few lines, but suffice it to say that the 
result of this infusion of rude but vigorous life into Roman- 
ized society was a disorganization of the German, as well 
as the Roman structure—both a blending and an admixture 
of the idea of common rights in the soil with the idea of 
exclusive property, substantially as occurred in those 
provinces of the Eastern Empire subsequently overrun by 
the Turks. The feudal system, which was so readily 
adopted and so widely spread, was the result of such a 
blending; but underneath, and side by side with the feudal 
system, a more primitive organization, based on the com- 
mon rights of the cultivators, took root or revived, and has 
left its traces all over Europe. This primitive organization 
which allots equal shares of cultivated ground and the 
common use of uncultivated ground, and which existed in 
Ancient Italy as in Saxon England, has maintained itself 
beneath absolutism and serfdom in Russia, beneath Mos- 
lem oppression in Servia, and in India has been swept, but 
not entirely destroyed, by wave after wave of conquest, 
and century after century of oppression. 

The feudal system, which is not peculiar to Europe, but 
seems to be the natural result of the conquest of a settled 
country by a race among whom equality and individuality 
are yet strong, clearly recognized, in theory at least, that 
the land belongs to society at large, not to the individual. 
Rude outcome of an age in which might stood for right as 


338 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


nearly as it ever can (for the idea of right is ineradicable 
from the human mind, and must in some shape show itself 
even in the association of pirates and robbers), the feudal] 
system yet admitted in no one the uncontrolled and exclu- 
sive right to land. A fief was essentially a trust, and to 
enjoyment was annexed obligation. The sovereign,-theo- 
retically the representative of the collective power and 
rights of the whole people, was in feudal view the only 
absolute owner of land. And though land was granted to 
individual possession, yet in its possession were involved 
duties, by which the enjoyer of its revenues was supposed 
to render back to the commonwealth an equivalent for the 
benefits which from the delegation of the common right he 
received. 

In the feudal scheme the crown lands supported public 
expenditures which are now included in the civil ist; the 
church lands defrayed the cost of public worship and in- 
struction, of the care of the sick and of the destitute, and 
maintained a class of men who were supposed to be, and no 
doubt to a great extent were, devoting their lives to pur- 
poses of public good; while the military tenures provided 
for the public defense. In the obligation under which the 
military tenant lay to bring into the field such and such a 
force when need should be, as well as in the aid he had to 
give when the sovereign’s eldest son was knighted, his 
daughter married, or the sovereign himself made prisoner 
of war, was a rude and inefficient recognition, but still 
unquestionably a recognition, of the fact, obvious to the 
natural perceptions of all men, that land is not individual 
but common property. 

Nor yet was thé control of the possessor of land allowed 
to extend beyond his own life. Although the principle of 
inheritance soon displaced the principle of selection, as 
where power is concentrated it always must, yet feudal 
law required that there should always be some representa- 
tive of a fief, capable of discharging the duties as well as of 
receiving the benefits which were annexed to a landed 
estate, and who this should be, was not left to individual 


Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 339 


caprice, but rigorously determined in advance. Hence 
wardship and other feudal incidents. The system of pri- 
mogeniture and its outgrowth, the entail, were in their 
beginnings not the absurdities they afterwards became. 

The basis of the feudal system was the absolute owner- 
ship of the land, an idea which the barbarians readily 
acquired in the midst of a conquered population to whom 
it was familiar; but over this, feudalism threw a superior 
right, and the process of infeudation consisted of bringing 
individual dominion into subordination to the superior do- 
minion, which represented the larger community or nation. 
Its units were the land owners, who by virtue of their own- 
nership were absolute lords on their own domains, and who 
there performed the office of protection which M. Taine has 
so graphically described, though perhaps with too strong a 
coloring, in the opening chapter of his ‘‘ Ancient Regime.”’ 
The work of the feudal system was to bind together these 
units into nations, and to subordinate the powers and 
rights of the individual lords of land to the powers and 
rights of collective society, as represented by the suzerain 
or king. 

Thus the feudal system, in its rise and development, was 
a triumph of the idea of the common right to land, chang- 
ing an absolute tenure into a conditional tenure, and 
imposing peculiar obligations in return for the privilege of 
receiving rent. And during the same time, the power of 
land ownership was trenched, as it were, from below, the 
tenancy at will of the cultivators of the soil very generally 
hardening into tenancy by custom, and the rent which 
the lord could exact from the peasant becoming fixed and, 
certain. 

And amid the feudal system there remained, or there 
grew up, communities of cultivators, more or less subject to 
feudal dues, who tilled the soil as common property; and 
although the lords, where and when they had the power, 
claimed pretty much all they thought worth claiming, yet 
the idea of common right was strong enough to attach 
itself by custom to a considerable part of the land. The 


340 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII 


commons, in feudal ages, must have embraced a very large 
proportion of the area of most European countries. For in 
France (although the appropriations of these lands by the 
aristocracy, occasionally checked and rescinded by royal 
edict, had gone on for some centuries prior to the Revolu- 
tion, and during the Revolution and First Empire large 
distributions and sales were made), the common or com- 
munal lands still amount, according to M. de Laveleye, to 
4,000,000 hectares, or 9,884,400 acres. The extent of the 
common land of England during the feudal ages, may be 
inferred from the fact that though enclosures by the landed 
aristocracy began during the reign of Henry VII, it is 
stated that no less than 7,660,413 acres of common lands 
were enclosed under Acts passed between 1710 and 1843, 
of which 600,000 acres have been enclosed since 1845; and 
it is estimated that there still remain 2,000,000 acres of 
common in England, though of course the most worthless 
parts of the soil. 

In addition to these common lands, there existed in 
France, until the Revolution, and in parts of Spain, until 
our own day, a custom having all the force of law, by which 
cultivated lands, after the harvest had been gathered, be- 
came common for purposes of pasturage or travel, until the 
time had come to use the ground again; and in some places 
a custom by which any one had the right to go upon ground 
which its owner neglected to cultivate, and there to sow 
and reap a crop in security. Andif he chose to use manure 
for the first crop, he acquired the right to sow and gather 
a second crop ‘without let or hindrance from the owner. 

It is not merely the Swiss allmend, the Ditmarsh mark, 
the Servian and Russian village communities; not merely 
the long ridges which on English ground, now the exclusive 
property of individuals, still enable the antiquarian to trace 
out the great fields in ancient time devoted to the triennial 
rotation of crops, and in which each villager was annually 
allotted his equal plot; not merely the documentary evidence 
which careful students have within late years drawn from 
old records; but the very institutions under which modern 


a 


Chap. IV. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 341 


civilization has developed, which prove the universality 
and long persistence of the recognition of the common 
right to the use of the soil. 

There still remain in our legal systems survivals that 
have lost their meaning, that, like the still existing remains 
of the ancient commons of England, point to this. The 
doctrine of eminent domain (existing as well in Moham- 
“‘medan law), which makes the sovereign theoretically the 
only absolute owner of land, springs from nothing but the 
recognition of the sovereign as the representative of the 
collective rights of the people; primogeniture and entail, 
which still exist in England, and which existed in some of 
the American States a hundred years ago, are but distorted 
forms of what was once an outgrowth of the apprehension 
of land as common property. The very distinction made’ 
in legal terminology between real and personal property is 
but the survival of a primitive distinction between what was 
originally looked upon as common property and what from 
its nature was always considered the peculiar property of 
the individual. And the greater care and ceremony which 
are yet required for the transfer of land is but a survival, 
now meaningless and useless, of the more general and 
ceremonious consent once required for the transfer of rights 
which were looked upon, not as belonging to any one mem- 
ber, but to every member of a family or tribe. 

The general course of the development of modern civil- 
ization since the feudal period has been to the subversion of 
these natural and primary ideas of collective ownership in 
the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, the emergence of 
liberty from feudal bonds has been accompanied by a ten- 
dency in the treatment of land to the form of ownership 
which involves the enslavement of the working classes, and 
which is now beginning to be strongly felt all over the 
civilized world, in the pressure of an iron yoke, which can- 
not be relieved by any extension of mere political power or 
personal liberty, and which political economists mistake for 
the pressure of natural laws, and workmen for the oppres- 
sions of capital. 


342 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


This is clear—that in Great Britain to-day the right of 
the people as a whole to the soil of their native country is 
much less fully acknowledged than it was in feudal times. 
A much smaller proportion of the people own the soil, and 
their ownership is much more absolute. The commons, 
once so extensive and so largely contributing to the inde- 
pendence and support of the lower classes, have, all but a. 
small remnant of yet worthless land, been appropriated to 
individual ownership and enclosed; the great estates of 
the church, which were essentially common property de- 
voted to a public purpose, have been diverted from that trust 
to enrich individuals; the dues of the military tenants have 
been shaken off, and the cost of maintaining the military 
establishment and paying the interest upon an immense 
debt accumulated by wars has been saddled upon the 
whole people, in taxes upon the necessaries and comforts 
of life. The crown lands have mostly passed into private 
possession, and for the support of the royal family and all 
the petty princelings who marry into it, the British work- 
man must pay in the price of his mug of beer and pipe of 
tobacco. The English yeoman—the sturdy breed who won 
Crecy, and Poictiers, and Agincourt—is as extinct as the 
mastodon. The Scottish clansman, whose right to the 
soil of his native hills was then as undisputed as that of 
his chieftain, has been driven out to make room for the 
sheep ranges or deer parks of that chieftain’s descendant; 
the tribal right of the Irishman has been turned into a ten- 
ancy-at-will. Thirty thousand men have legal power ‘to 
expel the whole population from five-sixths of the British 
Islands, and the vast majority of the British people have 
no right whatever to their native land save to walk the 
streets or trudge the roads. To them may be fittingly ap- 
pled the words of a Tribune of the Roman People: 
** Men of Rome,” said Tiberius Gracchus—‘‘ men of Rome, 
you are called the lords of the world, yet have no right to a 
square foot of its soil! The wild beasts have their dens, but 
the soldiers of Italy have only water and air !” 

Lhe result has, perhaps, been more marked in England 


Chap. IV, PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 343 


than anywhere else, but the tendency is observable every- 
where, having gone further in England owing to circum- 
stances which have developed it with greater rapidity. 

The reason, I take it, that with the extension of the idea 
of personal freedom has gone on an extension of the idea 
of private property in land, is that as in the progress of 
civilization the grosser forms of supremacy connected with 
land ownership were dropped, or abolished, or became less 
obvious, attention was diverted from the more insidious, 
but really more potential forms, and the land owners were 
easily enabled to put property in land on the same basis as 
other property. 

The growth of national power, either in the form of 
royalty or parliamentary government, stripped the great 
lords of individual power and importance, and of their 
jurisdiction and power over persons, and so repressed strik- 
ing abuses, as the growth of Roman Imperialism repressed 
the more striking cruelties of slavery. The disintegration of 
the large feudal estates, which, until the tendency to con- 
centration arising from the modern tendency to production 
upon a large scale is strongly felt, operated to increase the 
number of land owners, and the abolition of the restraints 
by which land owners when population was sparser endeay- 
ored to compel laborers to remain on their estates, also 
contributed to draw away attention from the essential injus- 
tice involved in private property in land; while the steady 
progress of legal ideas drawn from the Roman law, which 
has been the great mine and storehouse of modern Jjuris- 
prudence, tended to level the natural distinction between 
property in land and property in other things. Thus, with 
the extension of personal liberty, went on an extension of 
individual proprietorship in land. 

The political power of the barons was, moreover, not 
broken by the revolt of the classes who could clearly feel the 
injustice of land ownership. Such revolts took place, 
again and again; but again and again were they repressed 
with terrible cruelties. What broke the power of the bar- 
ons was the growth of the artisan and trading classes, be- 


+| 


344 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


tween whose wages and rent there is not the same obvious 
relation. These classes, too, developed under a system of 
close guilds and corporations, which, as I have previously 
explained in treating of trade combinations and monopolies, 
enabled them to somewhat fence themselves in from the 
operation of the general law of wages, and which were 
much more easily maintained than now, when the effect of 
improved methods of transportation, and the diffusion of 
rudimentary education and of current news, is steadily 
making population more mobile. These classes did not 
see, and do not yet see, that the tenure of land is the fun- 
damental fact which must ultimately determine the condi- 
tions of industrial, social, and political life. And so the 
tendency has been to assimilate the idea of property in 
land with that of property in things of human production, 
and even steps backward have been taken, and been hailed, 
as steps in advance. The French Constituent Assembly, in 
1789, thought it was sweeping away a relic of tyranny when 
it abolished tithes and imposed the support of the clergy 
on general taxation. The Abbe Sieyés stood alone when 
he told them that they were simply remitting to the pro- 
prietors a tax which was one of the conditions on which 
they held their lands, and re-imposing it on the labor of 
the nation. Butin vain. The Abbé Sieyés being a priest, © 
was looked on as defending the interests of his order, 
when in truth he was defending the rights of man. In 
those tithes, the French people might have retained a 
large public revenue which would not have taken one cent- 
ime from the wages of labor or the earnings of capital. 
And so the abolition of the military tenures in England 
by the Long Parliament, ratified after the accession of 
Charles II, though simply an appropriation of public reve- 
“nues by the feudal landholders who thus got rid of the 
consideration on which they held the common property of 
the nation, and saddled it on the people at large, in the 
taxation of all consumers, has long been characterized, 
and is still held up in the law books, as a triumph of the 
spirit of freedom. Yet here is the source of the immense 


Chap. Ip. PROPERTY IN LAND HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 345 


debt and heavy taxation of England. Had the form of 
these feudal dues been simply changed into one better 
adapted to the changed times, English wars need never 
have occasioned the incurring of debt to the amount of a 
single pound, and the labor and capital of England need 
not have been taxed a single farthing for the maintenance 
of a military establishment. All this would have come 
from rent, which the landholders since that time have ap- 
propriated to themselves—from the tax which land owner- 
ship levies on the earnings of labor and capital. The 
landholders of England got their land on terms which re- 
quired them even in the sparse population of Norman days 
to put in the field, upon call, sixty thousand perfectly 
equipped horsemen,* and on the further condition of 
various fines and incidents which amounted to a consider- 
able part of the rent. It would probably be a low estimate 
to put the pecuniary value of these various services and 
dues at one-half the rental value of the land. Had the 
landholders been kept to this contract and no land been 
permitted to be inclosed except upon similar terms, the 
income accruing to the nation from English land would to- 
day be greater by many millions than the entire public 
revenues of the United Kingdom. England to-day might 
have enjoyed absolute free trade. There need not have 
been a customs duty, an excise, license, or income tax, yet 
all the present expenditures could be met, and a large 
surplus remain to be devoted to any purpose which would 
conduce to the comfort or well-being of the whole people. 

Turning back, wherever there is ight to guide us, we may 
everywhere see that in their first perceptions, all peoples have 
recognized the common ownership in land, and that private 
property is an usurpation, a creation of force and fraud. 

As Madame de Stael said, ‘‘ Liberty is ancient.’’ Jus- 
tice, if we turn to the most ancient records, will always be 
found to have the title of prescription. 


* Andrew Bisset, in ‘‘ The Strength of Nations,’’ London, 1859, a suggestive work in 
which he calls the attention of the English people to this measure by which the land- 
owners avoided the payment of their "rent to the nation, disputes the statement of 
Blackstone that a knight’s service was but for 40 days, and says it was during 
necessity, 


CHAPTER V. 
OF PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 


In the earlier stages of civilization we see that land is 
everywhere regarded as common property. And, turning 
from the dim past to our own times, we may see that nat- 
ural perceptions are still the same, and that when placed 
under circumstances in which the influence of education 
and habit is weakened, men instinctively recognize the 
equality of right to the bounty of nature. 

The discovery of gold in California brought together ina 
new country men who had been used to look on land as the 
rightful subject of individual property, and of whom prob- 
ably not one in a thousand had ever dreamed of drawing 
any distinction between property in land and property in 
anything else. But, for the first time in the history of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, these men were brought into contact 
with land from which gold could be obtained by the simple 
operation of washing it out. 

Had the land with which they were thus called upon to 
deal been agricultural, or grazing, or forest land, of pecu- 
har richness; had it been land which derived peculiar value 
from its situation for commercial purposes; or by reason 
of the water power which it afforded, or even had it con- 
tained rich mines of coal, iron or lead, the land system to 
which they had been used would have been applied, and 
it would have been reduced to private ownership in large 
tracts, as even the pueblo lands of San Francisco (really 
the most valuable in the State), which by Spanish law had 
been set apart to furnish homes for the future residents of 
that city, were reduced, without any protest worth speaking 
of. But the novelty of the case broke through habitual 
ideas, and threw men back upon first principles, and it was 
by common consent declared that this gold-bearing land 


-—é.. 


Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 347 


should remain common property, of which no one might 
take more than he could reasonably use, or hold for a 
longer time than he continued to use it. This perception of 
natural justice was acquiesced in by the General Govern- 
ment and the courts, and while placer mining remained of 
importance, no attempt was made to overrule this reversion 
to primitive ideas. The title to the land remained in the 
Government, and no individual could acquire more than a 
possessory claim. The miners in each district fixed the 
amount of ground an individual could take and the amount 
of work that must be done to constitute use. If this work 
were not done, any one could re-locate the ground. Thus, 
no one was allowed to forestall or to lock up natural re- 
sources. Labor was acknowledged as the creator of 
wealth, was given a free field, and secured inits reward. The 
device would not have assured complete equality of rights 
under the conditions that in most countries prevail; but 
under the conditions that there and then existed—a sparse 
population, an unexplored country, and an occupation in its 
nature a lottery, it secured substantial justice. One man 
might strike an enormously rich deposit, and others might 
vainly prospect for months and years, but all had an 
equal chance. No one was allowed to play the dog in the 
manger with the bounty of the Creator. The essential idea 
of the mining regulations was to prevent forestalling and 
monopoly. Upon the same principle are based the mining 
laws of Mexico; and the same principle was adopted in 
Australia, in British Columbia, and in the diamond fields of 
South Africa, for it accords with natural perceptions of 
justice. 

With the decadence of placer mining in California, tle 
accustomed idea of private property finally prevailed in 
the passage of a law permitting the patenting of mineral 
lands.. The only effect is to lock up opportunities—to give 
the owner of mining ground the power of saying that no 
one else may use what he does not choose to use himself. 
And there are many cases in which mining ground is thus 
withheld from use for speculative purposes, just as yalu- 


d48 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


able building lots and agricultural land are withheld from 
use. But while thus preventing use, the extension to min- 
eral land of the same principle of private ownership which 
marks the tenure of other lands, has done nothing for the 
security of improvements. The greatest expenditures of 
capital in opening and developing mines—expenditures 
that in some cases amounted to millions of dollars—were 
made upon possessory titles. 

Had the circumstances which beset the first English 
settlers in North America been such as to call their atten- 
tion de novo to the question of land ownership, there can be 
no doubt that they would have reverted to first principles, 
just as they reverted to first principles in matters of govern- 
ment; and individual land ownership would have been re- 
jected, just as aristocracy and monarchy were rejected. But 
while in the country from which they came this system had 
not yet fuily developed itself, nor its effects been fully felt, 
the fact that in the new country an immense continent in- 
vited settlement prevented any question of the justice and 
policy of private property in land from arising. For in a 
new country, equality seems sufficiently assured if no one 
is permitted to take land to the exclusion of the rest. 
At first no harm seems to be done by treating this land 
as absolute property. There is plenty of land left for those 
who choose to take it, and the slavery that in a later stage 
of development necessarily springs from the individual 
ownership of land is not felt. 

In Virginia and to the South, where the settlement had 
an aristocratic character, the natural complement of the 
large estates into which the land was carved was intro- 
duced in the shape of negro slaves. But the first settlers 
of New England divided the land as, twelve centuries before, 
their ancestors had divided the land of Britain, giving to 
each head of a family his town lot and his seed lot, while 
beyond lay the free common. So far as concerned the 
great proprietors whom the English kings by letters patent 
endeavored to create, the settlers saw clearly enough the 
injustice of the attempted.monopoly, and none of these 


Chap V PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 349 


proprietors got much from their grants; but the plentiful- 
ness of land prevented attention from being called to the 
monopoly which individual land ownership, even when the 
tracts are small, must involve when land becomes scarce. 
And so it has come to pass that the great republic of the 
modern world has adopted at the beginning of its career 
an institution that ruined the republics of antiquity; that a 
people who proclaim the inalienable rights of all men to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have accepted 
without question a principle which, in denying the equal 
and inalienable right to the soil, finally denies the equal 
right to life and liberty; that a people who, at the cost of a 
bloody war have abolished chattel slavery, yet permit slav- 
ery in a more widespread and dangerous form to take root. 

The continent has seemed so wide, the area over which 
population might yet pour so vast, that familiarized by 
habit with the idea of private property in land, we have 
not realized its essential injustice. For not merely has 
this background of unsettled land prevented the full effect 
of private appropriation from being felt, even in the older 
sections, but to permit a man to take more land than he 
could use, that he might compel those who afterwards 
needed it to pay him for the privilege of using it, has not 
seemed so unjust when others in their turn might do the 
same thing by going further on. And more than this, the 
very fortunes that have resulted from the appropriation of 
land, and that have thus really been drawn from taxes lev- 
ied upon the wages of labor, have seemed, and have been 
heralded, as prizes held out tothe laborer. In all the newer 
States, and even to a considerable extent in the older 
ones, our landed aristocracy is yet in its first generation. 
Those who have profited by the increase in the value of 
land have been largely men who began life without a cent. 
Their great fortunes, many of them running up high into 
the millions, seem to them, and to many others, as the best 
proofs of the justice of existing social conditions in reward- 
ing prudence, foresight, industry, and thrift; whereas, the 
truth is that these fortunes are but the gains of monopoly, 


350 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VIL 


and are necessarily made at the expense of labor. But the 
fact that those thus enriched started as laborers hides this, 
and the same feeling which leads every ticket holder in a 
lottery to delight in imagination in the magnitude of the 
prizes has prevented even the poor from quarreling with a 
system which thus made many poor men rich. 

In short, the American people have failed to see the es- 
sential injustice of private property in land, because as yet 
they have not felt its full effects. This public domain— 
the vast extent of land yet to be reduced to private posses- 
sion, the enormous common to which the faces of the ener- 
getic were always turned, has been the great fact that, since 
the days when the first settlements began to fringe the At- 
lantic Coast, has formed our national character and colored. 
our national thought. Itis not that we have eschewed a 
titled aristocracy and abolished primogeniture; that we 
elect all our officers from School Director up to President; 
that our laws run in the name of the people, instead of in 
the name of a prince; that the State knows no religion, and 
our judges wear no wigs—that we have been exempted from 
the ills that Fourth of July orators used to point to as 
characteristic of the effete despotisms of the Old World. 
The general intelligence, the general comfort, the active in- 
vention, the power of adaptation and assimilation, the free, 
independent spirit, the energy and hopefulness that have 
marked our people, are not causes, but results—they have 
sprung from unfenced land. This public domain has been 
the transmuting force which has turned the thriftless, un- 
ambitious Huropean peasant into the self-reliant Western 
farmer; it has given a consciousness of freedom even to the 
dweller in crowded cities, and has been a well-spring of 
hope even to those who have never thought of taking refuge 
upon it. The child of the people, as he grows to manhood 
in Kurope, finds all the best seats at the banquet of life 
marked ‘‘ taken,’ and must struggle with his fellows for 
the crumbs that fall, without one chance in a thousand of 
forcing or sneaking his way to a seat. In America, what- 
ever his condition, there has always been the consciousness 


Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 351 


that the public domain lay behind him; and the knowledge 
of this fact, acting and reacting, has penetrated our whole 
national life, giving to it generosity and independence, 
elasticity and ambition. All that we are proud of in the 
American character; all that makes our conditions and in- 
stitutions better than those of older countries, we may trace 
to the fact that land has been cheap in the United States, 
because new soil has been open to the emigrant. 

But our advance has reached the Pacific. Further west 
we cannot go, and increasing population can but expand 
north and south and fill up what has been passed over. 
North, it is already filling up the valley of the Red River, 
pressing into that of the Saskatchewan and pre-empting 
Washington Territory; south, it is covering Western Texas 
and taking up the arable valleys of New Mexico and Arizona. 

The republic has entered upon a new era, an era in which 
the monopoly of the land will tell with accelerating effect. 
The great fact which has been so potent is ceasing to be. 
The public domain is almost gone—a very few years will 
end its influence, already rapidly failing. Ido not mean to 
say that there will be no public domain. For a long time 
to come there will be millions of acres of public lands car- 
ried on the books of the Land Department. But it must 
be remembered that the best part of the continent for agri- 
cultural purposes is already overrun, and that it is the 
poorest land that is left. It must be remembered that 
- what remains comprises the great mountain ranges, the 
sterile deserts, the high plains fit only for grazing. And it 
must be remembered that much of this land which figures 
in the reports as open to settlement is unsurveyed land, 
which has been appropriated by possessory claims or loca- 
tions which do not appear until the land is returned as 
surveyed. California figures on the books of the Land De- 
partment as the greatest land State of the Union, containing 
nearly 100,000,000 acres of public land—something lke 
one-twelfth of the whole public domain. Yet so much of 
this is covered by railroad grants or held in the way of 
which I have spoken; so much consists of untillable moun- 


352 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book VII. 


tains or plains which require irrigation, so much is 
monopolized by locations which command the water, that 
as a inatter of fact it is difficult to point the immigrant to 
any part of the State where he can take up a farm on which 
he can settle and maintain a family, and so men, weary of 
the quest, end by buying land or renting it on shares. It 
is not that there is any real scarcity of land in California— 
for, an empire in herself, California will some day maintain 
a population as large as that of France—but appropriation 
has got ahead of the settler and manages to keep just ahead 
of him. 

Some twelve or fifteen years ago the late Ben Wade of 
Ohio said, in a speech in the United States Senate, that by 
the close of this century every acre of ordinary agricultural 
land in the United States would be worth $50 in gold. It 
is already clear that if he erred at all, it was in overstating 
the time. In the twenty-one years that remain of the 
present century, if our population keep on increasing at 
the rate which it has maintained since the institution of 
the government, with the exception of the decade which 
included the civil war, there will be an addition to our 
present population of something like forty-five millions, 
an addition of some seven millions more than the total 
population of the United States as shown by the census of 
1870, and nearly half as much again as the present popula- 
tion of Great Britain. There is no question about the 
ability of the United States to support such a population 
and many hundreds of millions more, and, under proper 
social adjustments, to support them in increased comfort; 
but in view of such an increase of population, what be- 
comes of the unappropriated public domain. Practically 
there will soon cease to be any. It will be avery long time 
before it is all in use; but it will be a very short time, as 
we are going, before all that men can turn to use will have 
an owner. 

But the evil effects of making the land of a whole people 
the exclusive property of some, do-not wait for the final 
appropriation of the public domain to show themselves, 


Chap. V. PROPERTY IN LAND IN THE UNITED STATES. 309 


It is not necessary to contemplate them in the future; we 
may see them in the present. They have grown with our 
erowth, and are still increasing. 

We plow new fields, we open new mines, we found new 
cities; we drive back the Indian and exterminate the buffalo; 
we girdle the land with iron roads and lace the air with 
telecraph wires; we add knowledge to knowledge, and 
utilize invention after invention; we build schools and 
endow colleges; yet it becomes no easier for the masses of 
our people to make a living. On the contrary, it is becom- 
ing harder. The wealthy class is becoming more wealthy; 
but the poorer class is becoming more dependent. ‘The 
eulf between the employed and the employer is growing 
wider; social contrasts are becoming sharper; as liveried 
carriages appear, so do barefooted children. We are becom- 
ing used to talk of the working classes and the propertied 
classes; beggars are becoming so common that where it was 
once thought a crime little short of highway robbery to 
refuse food to one who asked for it, the gate is now barred 
and the bulldog loosed, while laws are passed against vag~ 
rants which suggest those of Henry VIII. 

We call ourselves the most progressive people on earth. 
But what is the goal of our progress, if these are its way- 
side fruits ? 

These are the results of private property in land—the effects 
of a principle that must act with increasing and increasing 
force. Itis not that laborers have increased faster than capi- 
tal; it is not that population is pressing against subsistence; 
it is not that machinery has made ‘‘ work scarce;’’ it is not 
that there is any real antagonism between labor and capital— 
it is simply that land is becoming more valuable; that the 
terms on which labor can obtain access to the natural 
opportunities which alone enable it to produce, are becom- 
ing harder and harder. The public domain is receding 
and narrowing. Property in land is concentrating. The 
proportion of our people who have no legal right to the 
land on which they live is becoming steadily larger. 

Says the New York World; ‘‘A non-resident proprie- 

16 


354 JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY. Book V1L. 


tary, like that of Ireland, is getting to be the characteristic 
of large farming districts in New England, adding yearly 
to the nominal value of leasehold farms; advancing yearly 
the rent demanded, and steadily degrading the character 
of the tenantry.” And the Nation, alluding to the same 
section, says: ‘‘ Increased nominal value of land, higher 
rents, fewer farms occupied by owners; diminished prod- 
uct; lower wages; a more ignorant population; increasing 
number of women employed at hard, outdoor labor (surest 
sien of a declining civilization), and a steady deterioration 
in the style of farming—these are the conditions described 
by a cumulative mass of evidence that is perfectly irresist- 
ible.” 

The same tendency is observable in the new States, 
where the large scale of cultivation recalls the latifundia 
that ruined ancient Italy. In California a very large 
proportion of the farming land is rented from year to year, 
at rates varying from a fourth to even half the crop. 

The harder times, the lower wages, the increasing pov- 
erty perceptible in the United States are but results of the 
natural laws we have traced—laws as universal and as irre- 
sistible as that of gravitation. We did not establish the 
republic when, in the face of principalities and powers, we 
flung the declaration of the inalienable rights of man; we 
shall never establish the republic until we practically carry 
out that declaration by securing tu the poorest child born 
among us an equal right to his native soil! We did not 
abolish slavery when we ratified the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment; to abolish slavery we must abolish private property 
in land! Unless we come back to first principles, unless 
we recognize natural perceptions of equity, unless we ac- 
knowledge the equal right of all to land, our free insti- 
tutions will be in vain, our common schools wil] be in 
vain; our discoveries and inventions will but add to the 
force that presses the masses down! 


le XOKOMSE WAIL 


APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. 


CHAPTER I.—PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH THE 
BEST USE OF LAND. 

CHAPTER II.—HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE ASSERTED AND 
SECURED. 

CHAPTER III.—THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 

CHAPTER IV.—INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS, 


Cd g 


ies eS ‘ 
vy) oae él a ne 
Meehan’: |. a =! = 


Why hesitate? Ye are full-bearded men, 
_ With God-implanted will, and courage if 
Ye dare but show it. Never yet was will 

But found some way or means to work it out, 

Nor e’er did Fortune frown on him who dared. ~ 

Shall we in presence of this grievous wrong, 

In this supremest moment of all time, : 

Stand trembling, cowering, when with one bold stroke - 
These groaning millions might be ever free 7— te 
And that one stroke so just, so greatly good, ie 

So level with the happiness of man, ; 
That all the angels will applaud the deed. 


CHAPTER I. 


PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND INCONSISTENT WITH THE BEST USE 
OF LAND. 


There is a delusion resulting from the tendency to con- 
found the accidental with the essential—a delusion which 
the law writers have done their best to extend, and political 
economists generally have acquiesced in, rather than en- 
deavored to expose—that private property in land is nec- 
essary to the proper use of land, and that again to make 
land common property would be to destroy civilization 
and revert to barbarism. 

This delusion may be lkened to the idea which, accord- 
ing to Charles Lamb, so long prevailed among the Chinese 
after the savor of roast pork had been accidentally discovered 
by the burning down of Ho-ti’s hut—that to cook a pig it 
was necessary to set fire to a house. But, though in Lamb’s 
charming dissertation it was required that a sage should 
arise to teach people that they might roast pigs without 
burning down houses, it does not take a sage to see that 
what is required for the improvement of land is not ab- 
solute ownership of the land, but security for the im- 
provements. This will be obvious to whoever will look 
around him. While there is no more necessity for making 
a man the absolute and exclusive owner of land in order , 
to induce him to improve it, than there is of burning 
down a house in order to cook a pig; while the making of 
land private property is as rude, wasteful, and uncertain a 
device for securing improvement, as the burning down of a 
house is a rude, wasteful, and uncertain device for roast- ~ 
ing a pig, we have not the excuse for persisting in the one 
that Lamb’s Chinamen had for persisting in the other. 
Until the sage arose who invented the rude gridiron (which 


- 


358 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII. 


according to Lamb preceded the spit and oven), no one had 
known or heard of a pig being roasted, except by a house 
being burned. But, among us, nothing is more common 
than for land to be improved by those who do not own it. 
The greater part of the land of Great Britain is cultivated 
by tenants, the greater part of the buildings of London are 
built upon leased ground, and even in the United States 
the same system prevails everywhere to a greater or less ex- 
tent. Thus itis a common matter for use to be separated 
from ownership. 

Would not all this land be cultivated and improved just 
as well if the rent went to the State or municipality, as now, 
when it goes to private individuals? If no private owner- 
ship in land were acknowledged, but all land were held in 
this way, the occupier or user paying rent to the State, 
would not land be used and improved as well and as securely 
as now? There can be but one answer: Of course it would. 
Then would the resumption of land as common property in 
nowise interfere with the proper use and improvement of 
land. 

What is necessary for the use of land is not its private 
ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not 
necessary to say to a man, ‘‘ this land is yours,” in order to 
induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only necessary © 
to say to him, ‘‘ whatever your labor or capital produces on 
this land shall be yours.’”’ Give a man security that he 
may reap, and he will sow; assure him of the possession of 
the house he wants to build, and he will build it. These 
are the natural rewards of labor. It is for the sake of the 
reaping that men sow; it is for the sake of possessing 
houses that men build. The ownership of land has nothing 


,» to do with it. 


It was for the sake of obtaining this security, that in the 
beginning of the feudal period so many of the smaller 
landholders surrendered the ownership of their lands to a 
military chieftain, receiving back the use of them in fief or 
trust, and kneeling bareheaded before the lord, with their 
hands between his hands, swore to serve him with life, 


Chap. 1. OWNERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND. 359 


and limb, and worldly honor. Similar instances of the 
ceiving up of ownership in land for the sake of security in 
its enjoyment are to be seen in Turkey, where a peculiar 
exemption from taxation and extortion attaches to vakouf, 
or church lands, and where it is a common thing for a land 
owner to sell his land to a mosque for a nominal price, with 
the understanding that he may remain as tenant upon it at 
a fixed rent. 

It is not the magic of property, as Arthur Young said, 
that has turned Flemish sands into fruitful fields. It is the 
magic of security. to labor. This can be secured in other 
ways than making land private property, just as the heat 
necessary to roast a pig can be secured in other ways than 
by burning down houses. The mere pledge of an Irish land- 
lord that for twenty years he would not claim in rent any 
share in their cultivation induced Irish peasants to turn a 
barren mountain into gardens; on the mere security of a 
fixed ground rent for a term of years the most costly build- 
ings of such cities as London and New York are erected on 
leased ground. If we give improvers such security, we 
may safely abolish private property in land. 

The complete recognition of common rights to land need 
in no way interfere with the complete recognition of indi- 
vidual right to improvements or produce. Two men may 
own a ship without sawing her in half. The ownership of 
a railway may be divided into a hundred thousand shares, 
and yet trains be run with as much system and precision as 
if there were but asingle owner, In London, joint stock 
companies have been formed to hold and manage real 
estate. Lverything céuld go on as now, and yet the com- 
mon right to land be fully recognized by appropriating rent 
to the common benefit. There is a lot in the center of 
San Francisco to which the common rights of the people 
of that city are yet legally recognized. This lot is not cut 
up into infinitesimal pieces nor yet is it an unused waste. 
It is covered with fine buildings, the property of private 
individuals, that stand there in perfect security. The only 
difference between this lot and those around it, is that the 


360 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY, Book VIIL 


rent of the one goes into the Common School Fund, the 
rent of the others into private pockets. What is to prevent 
the land of a whole country being held by the people of 
the country in this way? 

It would be difficult to select any portion of the territory 
of the United States in which the conditions commonly 
taken to necessitate the reduction of land to private owner- 
ship exist in higher degree than on the little islets of St. 
Peter and St. Paul, in the Aleutian Archipelago, acquired 
by the Alaska purchase from Russia. These islands are 
the breeding places of the fur seal, an animal so timid and 
wary that the slightest fright causes it to abandon its accus- 
tomed resort, never to return. To prevent the utter des- 
truction of this fishery, without which the islands are of no 
use to man, it is not only necessary to avoid killing the 
females and young cubs, but even such noises as the dis- 
charge of a pistol or the barking of a dog. The men who 
do the killing must be in no hurry, but quietly walk around 
among the seals who line the rocky beaches, until the timid 
animals, so clumsy on land but so graceful in water, show 
no more sign of fear than to lazily waddle out of the way. 
Then those who can be killed without diminution of future 
increase are carefully separated and gently driven inland, 
out of sight and hearing of the herds, where they are dis- 
patched with clubs. To throw such a fishery as this open 
to whoever chose to go and kill—which would make it to 
the interest of each party to kill as many as they could at 
the time without reference to the future—would be to 
utterly destroy it in a few seasons, as similar fisheries in 
other oceans have been destroyed. But it is not necessary, 
therefore, to make these islands private property. Though 
for reasons greatly less cogent, the great public domain of 
the American people has been made over to private owner- 
ship as fast as anybody could be got to take it, these islands 
have been leased at a rent of $317,500 per year,* probably 


* The fixed rent under the lease to the Alaska Fur Company is $55,000 a year, with a 
payment of $2 62} on each skin, which on 106,000 skins, to which the take is limited, 
amounts to $202,500 total rent of $317,500, 


Cheep. 2. OWNERSHIP AND THE USE OF LAND. 361 


not very much less than they could have been sold for at 
the time of the Alaska purchase. They have already yielded 
two millions and a half to the national treasury, and they 
are still, in unimpaired value (for under the careful man- 
agement of the Alaska Fur Company the seals increase 
rather than diminish), the common property of the people 
of the United States. 

So far from the recognition of private property in land 
being necessary to the proper use of land, the contrary -is 
the case. Treating land as private property stands in the 
way of its proper use. Were land treated as public prop- — 
erty it would be used and improved as soon as there was 
need for its use or improvement, but being treated as 
private property, the individual owner is permitted to pre- 
vent others from using or improving what he cannot or will 
not use or improve himself. When the title is in dispute, 
the most valuable land lies unimproved for years; in many 
parts of England improvement is stopped because, the 
estates being entailed, no security to improvers can be 
given; and large tracts of ground which, were they treated 
as public property, would be covered with buildings and 
crops, are kept idle to gratify the caprice of the owner. In | 
the thickly settled parts of the United States there is 
enough land to maintain three or four times our present 
population, lying unused, because its owners are holding it 
for higher prices, and immigrants are forced past this un- 
used land to seek homes where their labor will be far less 
productive. In every city, valuable lots may be seen lying 
vacant for the same reason. If the best use of land be the 
test, then private property in land is condemned, as it is 
condemned by every other consideration. It is as wasteful 
and uncertain a mode of securing the proper use of land, 
as the burning down of houses is of roasting pigs. 


CHAPTER II. 
HOW EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND MAY BE ASSERTED AND SECURED, 


We have traced the want and suffering that everywhere 
prevail among the working classes, the recurring paroxysms 
of industrial depression, the scarcity of employment, the 
stagnation of capital, the tendency of wages to the starva- 
tion point, that exhibit themselves more and more strongly 
as material progress goes on, to the fact that the land on 
which and from which all must live is made the exclusive 
property of some. 

We have seen that there is no possible remedy for these 
evils but the abolition of their cause; we have seen that 
private property in land has no warrant in justice, but 
stands condemned as the denial of natural right—a subver- 
sion of the law of nature that as social development goes 
on must condemn the masses of men to a slavery the 
hardest and most degrading. 

We have weighed every objection, and seen that neither 
on the ground of equity or expediency is there anything to 
deter us from making land common property by confisca- 
ting rent. 

But a question of method remains. How shall we do it? 

We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all 
economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all 
private titles, declaring all land public property, and letting 
it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under such con- 
ditions as would sacredly guard the private right to im- 
provements. 

Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of society, 
the same equality of rights that in a ruder state were se- 
cured by equal partitions of the soil, and by giving the use 


{ ' 


Chap. 11. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED. 363 


of the land to whoever could procure the mest from it, 
we should secure the greatest production. 

Such a plan, instead of being a wild, impracticable 
vagary, has (with the exception that he suggests compensa- 
tion to the present holders of land—undoubtedly a careless 
concession which he upon reflection would reconsider) been 
indorsed by no less erninent a thinker than Herbert Spen- 
cer, who (‘‘ Social Statics,’ Chap. IX, Sec. 8) says of it: 

‘« Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civilization; 
may be carried out without involving a community of goods, and need 
cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change 
required would simply be a change of landlords, Separate ownership 
would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the public. Instead of 
being in the possession of individuals, the country would be held by 
the great corporate body—society. Instead of leasing his acres from an 
isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. In- 
stead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he 
would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the community. Stewards 
would be public officials instead of private ones, and tenancy the only 
land tenure. A state of things so ordered would be in perfect hai- 
mony with the moral law. Under it all men would be equally land- 
lords; all men would be alike free to become tenants. * *  Clear- 


ly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be enclosed, occupied 
and cultivated, in entire subordination to the law of equal freedom.” 


But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not seem 
to me the best. Or rather I propose to accomplish the 
same thing in a simpler, easier, and quieter way, than that 
of formally confiscating all the land and formally letting 
it out to the highest bidders. 

To do that would involve a needless shock to present 
customs and habits of thought—which is to be avoided. 

To do that would involve a needless extension of govern- 
mental machinery—which is to be avoided. 

It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful 
founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon— 
that great changes can best be brought about under old 
forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same 
truth. It is the natural method. When nature would 
make a higher type, she takes a lower one and developes it. 
This, also, is the law of social growth. Let us work by it. 
With the current we may glide fast and far. Against it, it 
is hard pulling and slow progress, 


364 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII. 


I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate pri- 
vate property in land. The first would be unjust; the 
second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it 
still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are 
pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it 
their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and de- 
vise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the 
kernel. Jt is not necessary to confiscate land; vt 1s only neces- 
sary to confiscate rent. 

Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that the 
State should bother with the letting of lands, and assume 
the chances of the favoritism, collusion, and corruption this 
might involve. It is not necessary that any new machin- 
ery should be created. The machinery already exists. In- 
stead of extending it, all we have to do is to simplify and 
reduce it. By leaving to land owners a percentage of rent 
which would probably be much less than the cost and loss 
involved in attempting to rent lands through State agency, 
and by making use of this existing machinery, we may, 
without jar or shock, assert the common right to land by 
taking rent for public uses. 

We already take some rent in taxation. We have only 
to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take it 
all. 

What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign 
remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earnings of 
capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remu- 
nerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free 
scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals, and 
taste, and intelligence, purify government and carry civiliza- 
tion to yet nobler hights, is—to appropriate rent by taxation. 

In this way, the State may become the universal landlord 
without calling herself so, and without assuming a single 
new function. In form, the ownership of land would re- 
main just as now. No owner of land need be dispossessed, 
and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land_ 
any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the State in 

taxes, land, no matter in whose name it stood, or in what 


Chap. IT. HOW EQUAL RIGHTS MAY BE ASSERTED. 065 


parcels it was held, would be really common property, and 
every member of the community would participate in the 
advantages of its ownership. 

Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, 
must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other 
taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form by 
proposing— 


To abolish all taxation save that upon land values. 


As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning of 
society nothing, but as society developes by the increase of 
population and the advance of the arts, it becomes greater 
and greater. In every civilized country, even the newest, 
the value of the land taken as a whole is sufficient to 
bear the entire expenses of government. In the better 
developed countries it is much more than sufficient. 
Hence it will not be enough merely to place all taxes 
upon the value of land. It will be necessary, where 
rent exceeds the present governmental revenues, to com- 
mensurately increase the amount demanded in taxa- 
tion, and to continue this increase as society progresses 
and rent advances. But this is so natural and easy a 
matter, that it may be considered as involved, or at 
least understood. in the proposition to put all taxes on 
the value of land. That is the first step, upon which the 
practical struggle must be made. When the hare is once 
caught and killed, cooking him will follow as a matter of 
course. When the common right to land is so far appre- 
ciated that all taxes are abolished save those which fall 
upon rent, there is no danger of much more than is neces- 
sary to induce them to collect the public revenues being 
left to individual landholders. 

Experience has taught me (for I have been for some years 
endeavoring to popularize this proposition) that wherever 
the idea of concentrating all taxation upon land values 
finds lodgment sufficient to induce consideration, it inva- 
riably makes way, but that there are few of the classes 
most to be benefitted by it, who at first, or even for a long 


366 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VI12. 


time afterwards, see its full significance and power. It is 
difficult for workingmen to get over the idea that there is a 
real antagonism between capital and labor. It is difficult 
for small farmers and homestead owners to get over the 
idea that to put all taxes on the value of land would be to 
unduly tax them. Itis difficult for both classes to get over 
the idea that to exempt capital from taxation would be to 
make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. These ideas 
spring from confused thought. But behind ignorance and 
prejudice there is a powerful interest, which has hitherto 
dominated literature, education, and opinion. A great 
wrong always dies hard, and the great wrong which in 
every civilized country condemns the masses of men to 
poverty and want, will not die without a bitter struggle. 

I do not think the ideas of which I speak can be enter- 
tained by the reader who has followed me thus far; but 
inasmuch as any popular discussion must deal with the 
concrete, rather than with the abstract, let me ask him to 
follow me somewhat further, that we may try the remedy I 
have proposed by the accepted canons of taxation. In 
doing so, many incidental bearings may be seen that other- 
wise might escape notice. 


CHAP THR? LLY. 
THE PROPOSITION TRIED BY THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 


The best tax by which public revenues can be raised is 
evidently that which will closest conform to the following 
conditions: | 

1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon production— 
so as least to check the increase of the general fund from 
which taxes must be paid and the community maintained. 

2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall as 
directly as may be upon the ultimate payers—so as to take 
from the people as little as possible in addition to what it 
yields the government. 

3. That it be certain—so as to give the least opportunity 
for tyranny or corruption on the part of officials, and the 
least temptation to law-breaking and evasion on the part of 
the taxpayers.., 

4. That it bear equally—so as to give no citizen an ad- 
vantage or put any at a disadvantage, as compared with 
others. 

Let us consider what form of taxation best accords with 
these conditions. Whatever it be, that evidently will be 
the best mode in which the public revenues can be raised. 


I.—The Effect of Taxes upon Production. 


All taxes must evidently come from the produce of land 
and labor, since there is no other source of wealth than the 
union of human exertion with the material and forces of 
nature. But the manner in which equal amounts of taxa- 
tion may be imposed may very differently affect the produc- 
tion of wealth. Taxation which lessens the reward of the 
producer necessarily lessens the incentive to production; 
taxation which is conditioned upon the act of production, 


368 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIIL 


or the use of any of the three factors of production, neces- 
sarily discourages production. Thus taxation which dimin- 
ishes the earnings of the laborer or the returns of the 
capitalist tends to render the one less industrious and in- 
telligent, the other less disposed to save and invest. 
Taxation which falls upon the processes of production 
interposes an artificial obstacle to the creation of wealth. 
- Taxation which falls upon labor as it is exerted, wealth as 
it is used as capital, land as it is cultivated, will manifestly 
tend to discourage production much more powerfully than 
taxation to the same amount levied upon laborers, whether 
they work or play, upon wealth whether used productively 
or unproductively, or upon land whether cultivated or left 
waste. 

The mode of taxation is, in fact, quite as important as 
the amount. Asa small burden badly placed may distress 
a horse that could carry with ease a much larger one prop- 
erly adjusted, so a people may be impoverished and their 
power of producing wealth destroyed by taxation, which, if 
levied in another way, could be borne with ease. <A tax on 
date trees, imposed by Mohammed Ali, caused the Egyptian 
fellahs to cut down their trees; but a tax of twice the 
amount imposed on the land produced no such result. The 
tax of ten per cent. on all sales, imposed by the Duke of 
Alva in the Netherlands, would, had it been maintained, 
have all but stopped exchange while yielding but little 
revenue. | | 

But we need not go abroad for illustrations. The pro- 
duction of wealth in the United States is largely lessened 
by taxation which bears upon its processes. Ship-building, 
in which we excelled, has been all but destroyed, so far as 
the foreign trade is concerned, and many branches of pro- 
duction and exchange seriously crippled, by taxes which 
divert industry from more to less productive forms. 

This checking of production is in greater or less degree 
characteristic of most of the taxes by which the revenues of 
modern governments are raised. All taxes upon manufac- 
tures, all taxes upon commerce, all taxes upon capital. all 


Chap. ILI. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 369 


taxes upon improvements, are of this kind. Their tendency 
is the same as that of Mohammed Ali’s tax on date trees, 
though their effect may not be so clearly seen. 

All such taxes have a tendency to reduce the production 
of wealth, and should, therefore, never be resorted to 
when it is possible to raise money by taxes which do not 
check production. This becomes possible as society de- 
velopes and wealth accumulates. Taxes which fall upon 
ostentation would simply turn into the public treasury 
what otherwise would be wasted in vain show for the sake 
of show; and taxes upon wills and devises of the rich would 
probably have little effect in checking the desire for accu- 
mulation, which, after it has fairly got hold of a man, 
becomes a blind passion. But the great class of taxes from 
_ which revenue may be derived without interference with 
production are taxes upon monopolies—for the profit of 
monopoly is in itself a tax levied upon production, and to 
tax it is simply to divert into the public coffers what pro- 
duction must in any event pay. 

There are among us various sorts of monopolies. For 
instance, there are the temporary monopolies created by the 
patent and copyright laws. These it would be extremely 
unjust and unwise to tax, inasmuch as they are but recog- 
nitions of the right of labor to its intangible productions, 
and constitute a reward held out to invention and author- 
ship. There are also the onerous monopolies alluded to in 
Chapter IV of Book III, which result from the aggregation 
of capital in businesses which are of the nature of monopo- 
lies. But while it would be extremely difficult, if not 
altogether impossible, to levy taxes by general law so that 
they would fall exclusively on the returns of such monop- 
oly and not become taxes on production or exchange, it is 
much better that these monopolies should be abolished. 
In large part they spring from legislative commission or 
omission, as, for instance, the ultimate reason that San 
Francisco merchants are compelled to pay more for goods 
sent direct from New York to San Francisco by the Isthmus 
route than it costs to ship them from New York to Liver- 

: 


ee 


370 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY Book VIII 


pool or Southampton and thence to San Francisco, is to 
be found in the ‘‘ protective” laws which make it so costly 
to build American steamers and which forbid foreign 
steamers to carry goods between American ports. The 
reason that residents of Nevada are compelled to pay as 
much freight from the East as though their goods were 
carried to San Francisco and back again, is that the au- 
thority which prevents extortion on the part of a hack 
driver is not exercised in respect to a railroad company. 
And it may be said generally, that businesses which are in 
their nature monopolies are properly part of the functions 
of the State, and should be assumed by the State. There 
is the same reason why Government should carry telegraphic 
messages as that it should carry letters; that railroads 
should belong to the public as that common roads should. 

But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as compared 
with the monopoly of land. And the value of land ex- 
pressing a monopoly, pure and simple, is in every respect 
fitted for taxation. Thatis to say, while the value of a 
railroad or telegraph line, the price of gas or of a patent 
medicine, may express the price of monopoly, it also ex- 
presses the exertion of labor and capital, but the value of 
land, or economic rent, as we have seen, is in no part made 
up from these factors, and expresses nothing but the advan- 
tage of appropriation. Taxes levied upon the value of land 
cannot check production in the slightest degree, until 
they exceed rent. or the value of land taken annually, 
for unlike taxes upon commodities, or exchange, or cap- 
ital, or any of the tools or processes of production, 
they do not bear upon production. The value of land 
does not express the reward of production, as does 
the value of crops, of cattle, of buildings, or any of 
the things which are styled personal property and im- 
provements. It expresses the exchange value of monop- 
oly. Itis not in any case the creation of the individual 
who owns the land; it is created by the growth of the com- 
munity. Hence the community can take it all without in 
any way lessening the incentive to improvement or in the 


Chap. 11l. - THE CANONS OF TAXATION. 371 


slightest degree lessening the production of wealth. Taxes 
may be imposed upon the value of land until all rent is 
taken by the State, without reducing the wages of labor or 
the reward of capital one iota; without increasing the price 
of a single commodity, or making production in any way 
more difficult. 

But more than this. Taxes on the value of land nob 
only do not check production as do most other taxes, but 
they tend to increase production, by destroying speculative 
rent. How speculative rent checks production may be seen 
not only in the valuable land withheld from use, but in 
the paroxysms of industrial depression which, originating 
in the speculative advance in land values, propagate them - 
selves over the whole civilized world, everywhere paralyzing 
industry, and causing more waste and probably more suffer- 
ing than would a general war. Taxation which would take 
rent for public uses would prevent all this; while if land 
were taxed to anything near its rental value, no one could 
afford to hold land that he was not using, and, consequently, 
land not in use would be thrown open to those who would 
use it. Settlement would be closer, and, consequently, labor 
and capital would be enabled to produce much more with 
the same exertion. The dog in the manger who, in this 
country especially, so wastes productive power, would be 
choked off. 

There is yet an even more important way by which, 
through its effect upon distribution, the taking of rent to 
public uses by taxation would stimulate the production of 
wealth. But reference to that may be reserved. It is 
sufficiently evident that with regard to production, the tax 
upon the value of land is the best tax that can be imposed. 
Tax manufactures, and the effect is to check manufacturing ; 
tax improvements, and the effect is to lessen improvement } 
tax commerce, and the effect is to prevent exchange; tax 
capital, and the effect is to drive it away. But the whole 
value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect 
will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to 
capital, and to increase the production of wealth, 


ote APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII 


IT.—As to Ease and Cheapness of Collection. 


With, perhaps, the exception of certain licenses and 
stamp duties, which may be made almost to collect them- 
selves, but which can be relied on for only a trivial amount 
of revenue, a tax upon land values can, of all taxes, be most 
easily and cheaply collected. For land cannot be hidden 
or carried off; its value can be readily ascertained, and 
the assessment once made, nothing but a receiver is re- 
quired for collection. 

And as under all fiscal systems some part of the public 
revenues is collected from taxes on land, and the machin- 
ery for that purpose already exists and could as well 
be made to collect all as a part, the cost of collecting the 
revenue now obtained by other taxes might be entirely 
saved by substituting the tax on land values for all other 
taxes. What an enormous saving might thus be made can 
be inferred from the horde of officials now engaged in col- 
lecting these taxes. 

This saving would largely reduce the difference between 
what taxation now costs the people and what it yields, but 
the substitution of a tax on land values for all other taxes 
would operate to reduce this difference in an even more 
important way. 

A tax on land values does not add to prices, and is thus 
paid directly by the persons on whom it falls; whereas, all 
taxes upon things of unfixed quantity increase prices, and 
in the course of exchange are shifted from seller to buyer, 
increasing as they go. If we impose a tax upon money 
loaned, as has been often attempted, the lender will charge 
the tax to the borrower, and the borrower must pay it or 
not obtain the loan. If the borrower uses it in his busi- 
ness, he in his turn must get back the tax from his custom- 
ers, or his business becomes unprofitable. If we impose a 
tax upon buildings, the users of buildings must finally pay 
it, for the erection of buildings will cease until building 
rents become high enough to pay the regular profit and the 
tax besides. If we impose a tax upon manufactures or im- 


Chap IL. THS CANONS OF TAXATION. 373 


ported goods, the manufacturer or importer will charge it 
in a higher price to the jobber, the jobber to the retailer, 
and the retailer to the consumer. Now, the consumer, 
on whom the tax thus ultimately falls, must not only pay 
the amount of the tax, but also a profit on this amount to 
every one who has thus advanced it—for profit on the 
capital he has advanced in paying taxes is as much required 
by each dealer as profit on the capital he has advanced in 
paying for goods. Manila cigars cost, when bought of 
the importer in San Francisco, $70 a thousand, of which 
$14 is the cost of the cigars laid down in this port 
and $56 is the customs duty. But the dealer who pur- 
chases these cigars to sell again, must charge a profit, not 
on $14, the real cost of the cigars, but on $70, the cost of the 
cigars plus the duty. In this way all taxes which add to 
prices are shifted from hand to hand, increasing as they go, 
until they ultimately rest upon consumers, who thus pay 
much more than is received by the government. Now, the 
way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of produc- 
tion, and checking supply. But land is not a thing of 
human production, and taxes upon rent cannot check sup- 
ply. Therefore, though a tax on rent compels the land 
owners to pay more, it gives them no power to obtain more 
for the use of their land, as it in no way tends to reduce 
the supply of land. On the contrary, by compelling 
those who hold land on speculation to sell or let for 
what they can get, a tax on land values tends to increase 
the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the 
price of land. 

Thus in all respects a tax upon land values is the cheap- 
est tax by which a large revenue can be raised-—giving to 
the Government the largest net revenue in proportion to 
the amount taken from the people. 


III —As to Certainty. 


Certainty is an important element in taxation, for just as 
the collection of a tax depends upon the diligence and 
faithfulness of the collectors and the public spirit and hon- 


374 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Rook. VIII. 


esty of those who are to pay it, will opportunities for tyr- 
anny and corruption be opened on the one side, and for 
evasions and frauds on the other. 

The methods by which the bulk of our revenues are col- 
lected are condemned on this ground, if on no other. The 
ross corruptions and fraud occasioned in the United 
‘States by the whisky and tobacco taxes are well known; 
the constant under-valuations of the Custom House, the 
ridiculous untruthfulness of income tax returns, and the 
absolute impossibility of getting anything like a just valu- 
ation of personal property, are matters of notoriety. The 
material loss which such taxes inflict—the item of cost 
which this uncertainty adds to the amount paid by the 
people but not received by the government—is very great. 
When, in the days of the protective system of England, her 
coasts were lined with an army of men endeavoring to pre- 
vent smuggling, and another army of men were engaged in 
evading them, it is evident that the maintenance of both 
armies had to come from the produce of labor and capital; 
that the expenses and profits of the smugglers, as well as 
the pay and bribes of the Custom House officers, consti- 
tuted a tax upon the industry of the nation, in addition to 
what was received by the government. And so, all douceurs 
to assessors; all bribes to customs officials; all moneys ex- 
pended in electing pliable officers or in procuring acts 
or decisions which avoid taxation; all the costly modes of 
bringing in goods so as to evade duties, and of manu- 
facturing so as to evade imposts; all moieties, and ex- 
penses of detectives and spies; all expenses of legal pro- 
ceedings and punishments, not only to the government, 
but to those prosecuted, are so much which these taxes take 
from the general fund of wealth, without adding to the 
revenue. 

Yet this is the least part of the cost. Taxes which lack 
the element of certainty tell most fearfully upon morals. 
Our revenue laws as a body might well be entitled, ‘‘Acts 
to promote the corruption of public officials, to suppress 
honesty and encourage fraud, to set a premium upon per- 


Chap. ITI. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. O15 


jury and the subornation of perjury, and to divorce the 
idea of law from the idea of justice.” This is their true 
character, and they succeed admirably. A Custom House 
oath is a by-word; our assessors regularly swear to assess 
all property at its full, true, cash value, and habitually do 
nothing of the kind; men who pride themselves on theiz 
personal and commercial honor bribe officials and make 
false returns; and the demoralizing spectacle is constantly 
presented of the same court trying a murderer one day and 
a vendor of unstamped matches the next! 

So uncertain and so demoralizing are these modes of tax- 
ation that the New York Commission, composed of David 
A. Wells, Edwin Dodge and George W. Cuyler, who inves- 
tigated the subject of taxation in that State, proposed to 
substitute for most of the taxes now levied, other than 
that on real estate, an arbitrary tax on each individual, 
estimated on the rental value of the premises he occu- 
pied. 

But there is no necessity of resorting to any arbitrary 
assessment. The tax on land values, which is the least 
arbitrary of taxes, possesses in the highest degree the ele- 
ment of certainty. It may be assessed and collected with 
a definiteness that partakes of the immovable and uncon- 
cealable character of the land itself. ‘Taxes levied on land 
may be collected to the last cent, and though the assess- 
ment of land is now often unequal, yet the assessment 
of personal property is far more unequal, and these 
inequalities in the assessment of land largely arise from 
the taxation of improvements with land, and from the 
demoralization that, springing from the causes to which I 
have referred, affects the whole scheme of taxation. Were 
all taxes placed upon land values, irrespective of improve- 
ments, the scheme of taxation would be so simple and 
clear, and public attention would be so directed to it, that 
the valuation of taxation could and would be made with the 
same certainty that a real estate agent can determine the 
price a seller can get for a lot. 


/ 


376 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII. 


IV.—As to Equality. 


Adam Smith’s canon is, that ‘‘ The subjects of every 
state ought to contribute towards the support of the gov- 
ernment as nearly as possible in proportion to their respec- 
tive abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which 
they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.” 
Livery tax, he goes on to say, which falls only upon rent, or 
only upon wages, or only upon interest, is necessarily 
unequal. In-accordance with this is the common idea 
which our systems of taxing everything vainly attempt 
to carry out—that every one should pay taxes in propor- 
tion to his means, or in proportion to his income. 

But, waiving all the insuperable practical difficulties in 
the way of taxing every one according to his means, it 1s 
evident that justice cannot be thus attained. 

Here, for instance, are two men of equal means, or equal 
incomes, one having a large family, the other having no 
one to support but himself. Upon these two men indirect 
taxes fall very unequally, as the one cannot avoid the taxes 
on the food, clothing, ete., consumed by his family, while 
the other need pay only upon the necessaries consumed by 
himself. But, supposing taxes levied directly, so that each 
pays the same amount. Still there is injustice. The income 
of the one is charged with the support of six, eight, or ten 
persons; the income of the other with that of but a single 
person. And unless the Malthusian doctrine be carried to 
the extent of regarding the rearing of a new citizen as an 
injury to the state, here is a gross injustice. 

But it may be said that this is a difficulty which cannot 
be got over; that it is Nature herself that brings human 
beings helpless into the world and devolves their support 
upon the parents, providing in compensation therefor her 
own sweet and great rewards. Very well, then, let us turn 
to Nature, and read the mandates of justice in her law. 

Nature gives to labor; and to labor alone. In a very 
Garden of Eden a man would starve but for human exer- 
tion. Now, here are two men of equal incomes—that of the 


Chap. III. THE CANONS OF TAXATION. O77 


one derived from the exertion of his labor, that of the other 
from the rent of land. Is it just that they should equally 
contribute to the expenses of the state? Evidently not. 
The income of the one represents wealth he creates and 
adds to the general wealth of the state; the income of the 
other represents merely wealth that he takes from the gen- 
eral stock, returning nothing. The right of the one to the 
enjoyment of hisincome rests on the warrant of nature, which 
returns wealth to labor; the right of the other to the enjoy- 
ment of his income is a mere fictitious right, the creation of 
municipal regulation, which is unknown and unrecognized 
by nature. The father who is told that from his labor he 
must support his children, must acquiesce, for such is the 
natural decree; but he may justly demand that from the in- 
come gained by his labor not one penny shall be taken, so 
long as a penny remains of incomes which are gained by a 
monopoly of the natural opportunities which Nature offers 
impartially to all, and in which his children have as their 
birth-right an equal share. 

Adam Smith speaks of incomes as ‘‘enjoyed under 
the protection of the state;’’ and this is the ground 
upon which the equal taxation of all species of prop- 
erty is commonly insisted upon—that it is equally protected 
by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the 
enjoyment of property is made possible by the state—that 
there is a value created and maintained by the community, 
which is justly called upon to meet community expenses. 
Now, of what values is thistrue? Only of the value of land. 
This is a value that does not arise until a community is 
formed, and that, unlike other values, grows with the growth 
of the community. It only exists as the community exists. 
Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valu- 
able, would have no value at all. With every increase of 
population the value of land rises; with every decrease it 
falls. This is true of nothing else save of things which, 
like the ownership of land, are in their nature monopolies. 

The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and 
equal of alltaxes. It falls only upon those who receive from 

ity 2 


378 } APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII. 


society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in 
proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by 
the community, for the use of the community, of that value 
which is the creation of the community. It is the appli- 
cation of the common property to common uses. When all 
rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, 
then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. No 
citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save 
as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and 
each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not 
till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its 
natural return. 


Ch HVAT PR eRe Rt Lv 
INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS, 


The grounds from which we have drawn the conclusion 
that the tax on land values or rent is the best method of / 
raising public revenues have been admitted expressly or 
tacitly by all economists of standing, since the determina- 
tion of the nature and law of rent. 

Ricardo says (Chap. X,) *‘a tax on rent would fall 
wholly on landlords, and could not be shifted to any class 
_ of consumers,’’ for it ‘* would leave unaltered the differ- 
ence between the produce obtained from the least productive 
land in cultivation and that obtained from land of every 
other quality. * * A tax on rent would not discourage the 
cultivation of fresh land, for such land pays no rent and 
_ would be untaxed.” 

McCulloch (Note XXIV to Wealth of Nations) declares 
that ‘‘in a practical point of view taxes on the rent of 
land are among the most unjust and impolitic that can be 
imagined,” but he makes this assertion solely on the ground 
of his assumption that it is practically impossible to dis- 
tinguish in taxation between the sum paid for the use of 
the soil and that paid on account of the capital expended 
upon it. But, supposing that this separation could be 
effected, he admits that the sum paid to landlords for the 
use of the natural powers of the soil might be entirely 
swept away by a tax, without their having it in their power 
to throw any portion of the burden upon any one else, and 
without affecting the price of produce. 

John Stuart Mill not only admits all this, but expressly 
declares the expediency and justice of a peculiar tax on 
rent, asking what right the landlords have to the accession 
of riches that comes to them from the general progress of 


380 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VILLI. 


society without work, risk, or economizing on their part, 
and although he expressly disapproves of interfering with 
their claim to the present value of land, he proposes to 
take the whole future increase as belonging to society by 
natural right. 

Mrs. Fawcett, in the little compendium of the writings 
of her husband, entitled ‘‘ Political Economy for Begin- 
ners,” says: ‘‘The land tax, whether small or great in 
amount, partakes of the nature of a rent paid by the 
owner of land to the state. In a great part of India 
the land is owned by the Government and thérefore 
the land tax is rent paid direct to the state. The eco- 
nomic perfection of this system of tenure may be readily 
perceived.” 

In fact, that rent should, both on grounds of expediency 
and justice, be the peculiar subject of taxation, is involved 
in the accepted doctrine of rent, and may be found in 
embryo in the works of all economists who have accepted 
the law of Ricardo. That these principles have not been 
pushed to their necessary conclusions, as I have pushed 
them, evidently arises from the indisposition to endanger 
or offend the enormous interest involved in private owner- 
ship in land, and from the false theories in regard to wages 
and the cause of poverty which have dominated economic 
thought. 

But there has been a school of economists who plainly 
perceived, what is clear to the natural perceptions of men 
when uninfluenced by habit—that the revenues of the com- 
mon property, land, ought to be appropriated to the 
common service. The French Economists of the last cen- 
tury, headed by Quesnay and Turgot, proposed just what 
Ihave proposed, that all taxation should be abolished save 
atax upon the value of land. As I am only acquainted 
with the doctrines of Quesnay and his disciples at second 
hand through the medium of the English writers, I am 
unable to say how far his peculiar ideas as to agriculture 
being the only productive avocation, etc., are erroneous 
apprehensions, or mere peculiarities of terminology. But 


Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 381 


of this I am-certain from the proposition in which his 
theory culminated—that he saw the fundamental relation 
between land and labor which has since been lost sight of, 
and that he arrived at practical truth, though, it may be, 
through a course of defectively expressed reasoning. The 
causes which leave in the hands of the landlord a ‘‘produce 
net’ were by the Physiocrats no better explained than the 
suction of a pump was explained by the assumption that 
nature abhors.a vacuum, but the fact in its practical rela- 
tions to social economy was recognized, and the benefit 
which would result from the perfect freedom given to in- 
dustry and trade by a substitution of a tax on rent for all 
the impositions which hamper and distort the application 
of labor was doubtless as clearly seen by them as it is by 
me. One of the things most to be regretted about the 
French Revolution is that it overwhelmed the ideas of the 
Economists, just as they were gaining strength among the 
thinking classes, and were apparently about to influence 
fiscal legislation. 

Without knowing anything of Quesnay or his doctrines, 
I have reached the same practical conclusion by a route 
which cannot be disputed and have based it on grounds 
which cannot be questioned by the accepted political econ- 
omy: 

The only objection to the tax on rent or land values which 
is to be met with in standard politico-economic works is 
one which concedes its advantages—for it is, that from the 
difficulty of separation, we might, in taxing the rent of 
land, tax something else. McCulloch, for instance, declares 
taxes on the rent of land to be impolitic and unjust. be- 
cause the return received for the natural and inherent 
powers of the soil cannot be clearly distinguished from the 
return received from improvements and meliorations, which 
might thus be discouraged. Macaulay somewhere says 
that if the admission of the attraction of gravitation were 
inimical to any considerable pecuviary interest, there would 
not be wanting arguments against gravitation—a truth of 
which this objection is an illustration. For admitting that 


382 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VILL. 


it is impossible to invariably separate the value of land 
from the value of improvements, is this necessity of con- 
tinuing to tax some improvements any reason why we 
should continue to tax all improvements? Jf it discourage 
production to tax values which labor and capital have inti- 
mately combined with that of land, how much greater dis- 
couragement is involved in taxing not only these, but all 
the clearly distinguishable values which labor and capital 
create ? 

But, as a matter of fact, the value of land can always 
be readily distinguished from the value of improvements. 
In countries like the United States there is much valuable 
land that has never been improved; and in many of the 
States the value of the land and the value of improvements 
are habitually estimated separately by the assessors, though 
afterwards re-united under the term real estate. Nor where 
ground has been occupied from immemorial times, is there 
any difficulty in getting at the value of the bare land, for 
frequently the land is owned by one person and the build- 
ings by another, and when a fire occurs and improvements 
are destroyed, a clear and definite value remains in the 
land. In the oldest country in the world no difficulty 
whatever can attend the separation, if all that be attempted 
is to separate the value of the clearly distinguishable im- 
provements, made within a moderate period, from the value 
of the land, should they be destroyed. This, manifestly, 
is all that justice or policy requires. Absolute accuracy is 
impossible in any system, and to attempt to separate all 
that the human race has done from what nature originally 
provided would be as absurd as impracticable. A swamp 
drained or a hill terraced by the Romans constitutes now 
as much a part of the natural advantages of the British 
Isles as though the work had been done by earthquake or 
glacier. The fact that after a certain lapse of time the 
value of such permanent improvements, would be consid- 
ered as having lapsed into that of the land, and would be 
taxed accordingly, could have no deterrent effect on such 
improvements, for such works are frequently undertaken 


Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 383 


upon leases for years. The fact is, that each generation 
builds and improves for itself, and not for the remote 
future. And the further fact is, that each generation is 
heir, not only to the natural powers of the earth, but to all 
that remains of the work of past generations. 

An objection of a different kind may however be made. 
It may be said that where political power is diffused, it is 
highly desirable that taxation should fall not on one class, 
such as land owners, but on all; in order that all who exer- 
cise political power may feel a proper interest in economical 
government. Taxation and representation, it will be said, 
cannot safely be divorced. 

But however desirable it may be to combine with politi- 
cal power the consciousness of public burdens, the present 
system certainly does not secure it. Indirect taxes are 
largely raised from those who pay little or nothing con- 
sciously. In the United States the class is rapidly growing 
who not only feel no interest in taxation, but who have no 
concern in good government. In our large cities elections 
are in great measure determined not by considerations of 
public interest, but by such influences as determined elec- 
tions in Rome when the masses had ceased to care for 
anything but bread and the circus. 

The effect of substituting for the manifold taxes now im- 
posed a single tax on the value of land would hardly les- 
sen the number of conscious taxpayers, for the division of 
land now held on speculation would much increase the 
number of landholders. But it would so equalize the dis- 
tribution of wealth as to raise even the poorest above that 
condition of abject poverty in which public considerations 
have no weight; while it would at the same time cut down 
those overgrown fortunes which raise their possessors above 
concern in government. The dangerous classes politically 
are the very rich and very poor. It is not the taxes that he 


is conscious of paying that gives a man a stake in the // 


country, an interest in its government; it is the conscious- 
ness of feeling that he is an integral part of the commu- 
nity; that its prosperity is his prosperity, and its disgrace 


884 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book VIII, 


his shame. Let but the citizen feel this; let him be sur- 
rounded by all the influences that spring from and cluster 
round a comfortable home, and the community may rely 
upon him, even to limb or to life. Men do not vote 
patriotically, any more than they fight patriotically, be- 
cause of their payment of taxes. Whatever conduces to 
the comfortable and independent material condition of 
the masses will best foster public spirit, will make the 
ultimate governing power more intelligent and more vir- 
tuous. 

But it may be asked: If the tax on land values is so ad- 
vantageous a mode of raising revenue, how is it that so 
many other taxes are resorted to in preference by all gov- 
ernments ? 

The answer is obvious: The tax on land values is the 
only tax of any importance that does not distribute itself. 
It falls upon the owners of land, and there is no way in 
which they can shift the burden upon any one else. 
Hence, a large and powerful class are directly interested in 
keeping down the tax on land values and substituting, as a 
means for raising the required revenue, taxes on other 
things, just as the land owners of England, two hundred 
years ago, succeeded in establishing an excise, which fell on 
all consumers, for the dues under the feudal tenures, which 
fell only on them. 

There is, thus, a definite and powerful interest opposed to 
the taxation of land values; but to the other taxes upon 
which modern governments so largely rely there is no special 
opposition. The ingenuity of statesmen has been exercised 
in devising schemes of taxation which drain the wages of 
jabor and the earnings of capital as the vampire bat is said 
to suck the lifeblood of its victim. Nearly all of these 
taxes are ultimately paid by that indefinable being, the. 
consumer; and he pays them in a way which does not call 
his attention to the fact that he is paying a tax—pays them 
in such small amounts and in such insidious modes that he 
does not notice it, and is not likely to take the trouble to 
remonstrate effectually. Those who pay.the money directly 


Chap. IV. INDORSEMENTS AND OBJECTIONS. 385 


to the tax collector are not only not interested in opposing 
a tax which they so easily shift from their own shoulders, 
but are very frequently interested in its imposition and 
maintenance, as are other powerful interests which profit, 
or expect to profit, by the increase of prices which such 
taxes bring about. 

Nearly all of the manifold taxes by which the people of 
the United States are now burdened have been imposed 
rather with a view to private advantage than to the raising 
of revenue, and the great obstacle to the simplification of 
taxation is these private interests, whose representatives 
cluster in the lobby whenever a reduction of taxation is 
proposed, to see that the taxes by which they profit are not 
reduced. The fastening of a protective tariff upon the 
United States has been due to these influences, and not to 
the acceptance of absurd theories of protection upon their 
own merits. The large revenue which the civil war ren- 
dered necessary was the golden opportunity of these special 
interests, and taxes were piled up on every possible thing, 
not so much to raise revenue as to enable particular classes 
to participate in the advantages of tax-gathering and tax- 
pocketing. And, since the war, these interested parties 
have constituted the great obstacle to the reduction of tax- 
ation; those taxes which cost the people least having, for 
this reason, been found easier to abolish than those taxes 
which cost the people most. And, thus, even popular goy- 
ernments, which have for their avowed principle the secur- 
ing of the greatest good to the greatest number, are, in a 
most important function, used to secure a questionable 
good to a small number, at the expense of a great evil to 
the many. 

License taxes are generally favored by those on whom 
they are imposed, as they tend to keep others from enter- 
ing the business; imposts upon manufactures are fre- 
quently grateful to large manufacturers for similar reasons, 
as was seen in the opposition of the distillers to the reduc- 
tion of the whisky tax; duties on imports not only tend to 
give certain producers special advantages, but accrue to 


386 APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY. Book V112. 


the benefit of importers or dealers who have large stocks 
on hand; and so, in the case of all such taxes, there are 
particular interests, capable of ready organization and 
concerted action, which favor the imposition of the tax, 
while, in the case of a tax upon the value of land, there 
is a solid and sensitive interest to steadily and bitterly 
oppose it. 

But if once the truth which I am trying to make clear is 
understood by the masses, it is easy to see how a union of 
political forces, strong enough to carry it into practice, 
becomes possible. 


IBROKDUSE IE Re 


EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. 


CHAPTER I.—OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 

CHAPTER ({1.—OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON 
PRODUCTION. 

CHATTER III.—OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 

CHAPTER IV.—OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL 
ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE, 


I cannot play upon any stringed instrument; but I can tell you how of a little village 
to make e great and glorious city. —Themistocles. 


Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come 
up-the myrtle tree. 

And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and 
eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another in&sbit; they shall not plant 
and another eat.—Jsatah. 


CHAPTER I. 
OF THE EFFECT UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 


The elder Mirabeau, we are told, ranked the proposition 
of Quesnay, to substitute one single tax on rent(the impdt 
unique) for all other taxes, as a discovery equal in utility 
to the invention of writing or the substitution of the use of 
money for barter. 

To whoever will think over the matter, this saying will 
appear an evidence of penetration rather than of extrava- 
gance. The advantages which would be gained by substi- 
tuting for the numerous taxes by which the public revenues 
are now raised, a single tax levied upon the value of land, 
will appear more and more important the more they are 
considered. ‘This is the secret which would transform the 
little village into the great city. With all the burdens re- 
moved which now oppress industry and hamper exchange, 
the production of wealth would go on with a rapidity now 
undreamed of. This, in its turn, would lead to an increase 
in the value of land—a new surplus which society might 
take for general purposes. And released from the difficul- 
ties which attend the collection of revenue in a way that 
begets corruption and renders legislation the tool of special 
interests, society could assume functions which the increas- 
ing complexity of life makes it desirable to assume, but 
which the prospect of political demoralization under the 
present system now leads thoughtful men to shrink from. 

Consider the effect upon the production of wealth. 

To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, now 
hampers every wheel of exchange and presses upon every 
form of industry, would be like removing an immense 
weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with fresh energy, 
production would start into new life, and trade would re- 


390 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 


ceive a stimulus. which would be felt to the remotest 
arteries. The present method of taxation operates upon 
exchange like artificial deserts and mountains; it costs 
more to get goods through a custom house than it does to 
carry them around the world. It operates upon energy, and 
industry, and skill, and thrift, like a fine upon those quali- 
ties. If I have worked harder and built myself a good 
house while you have been contented to live in a hovel, the 
tax-gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty 
for my energy and industry, by taxing me more than you. 
If I have saved while you wasted, Iam mulct, while you 
are exempt. If a man build a ship we make him pay for 
his temerity, as though he had done an injury to the state; 
if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax-collector upon | 
it, as though it were a public nuisance; if a manufactory be 
erected we levy upon it an annual sum which would go far 
towards making a handsome profit. We say we want capital, 
but if any one accumulate it, or bring it among us, we 
charge him for it as though we were giving him a privilege. 
We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with 
ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery, and 
him who drains aswamp. How heavily these taxes burden 
production only those realize who have attempted to follow 
our system of taxation through its ramifications, for, as I 
have before said, the heaviest part of taxation is that which 
falls in increased prices. But manifestly these taxes are 
in their nature akin to the Egyptian Pasha’s tax upon date 
trees. If they do not cause the trees to be cut down, they 
at least discourage the planting. 

To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enor- 
mous weight of taxation from productive industry. The 
needle of the seamstress and the great manufactory; the 
cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the 
steamship; the farmer’s plow and the merchant’s stock, 
would be alike untaxed. All would be free to make 
or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, unan- 
noyed by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to the 
producer, as it does now, “‘ The more you add to the gen- 


Chap, I. UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 391 


eral wealth the more shall you be taxed!” the state would 
say to the producer, ‘‘ Be as industrious, as thrifty, as en- 
terprising as you choose, you shall have your full reward ! 
You shall not be fined for making two blades of grass grow 
where one grew before; you shall not be taxed for adding 
to the aggregate wealth.” 

And will not the community gain by thus refusing to kill 
the goose that lays the golden eggs; by thus refraining 
from muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn; by thus 
leaving to industry, and thrift, and skill, their natural re- 
ward, full and unimpaired? Tor there is to the community 
also a natural reward. The law of society is, each for all, 
as well as all for each. No one can keep to himself the 
good he may do, any more than he can keep the bad. 
Every productive enterprise, besides its return to those who 
undertake it, yields collateral advantages to others. If a 
man plant a fruit tree, his gain is that he gathers the fruit 
in its time and season. But in addition to his gain, there 
is a gain to the whole community. Others than the owner 
are benefited by the increased supply of fruit; the birds 
which it shelters fly far and wide; the rain which it helps 
to attract falls not alone on his field; and, even to the eye 
which rests upon it from a distance, it brings a sense of 
beauty. And so with everything else. The building of 
a house, a factory, a ship, or a railroad, benefits others be- 
sides those who get the direct profits. Nature laughs at a 
miser. He is lke the squirrel who buries his nuts and re- 
frains from digging them up again. Lo! they sprout and 
erow into trees. In fine linen, steeped in costly spices, the 
mummy is laid away. Thousands and thousands of years 
thereafter, the Bedouin cooks his food by a fire of its en- 
casings, it generates the steam by which the traveler is 
whirled on his way, or it passes into far-off lands to gratify 
the curiosity of another race. The bee fills the hollow tree 
with honey, and along comes the bear or the man. 

_ Well may the community leave to the individual producer 
all that prompts him to exertion; well may it let the laborer 
_havye the full reward of his labor, and the capitalist the full 


392 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book LX. 


return of his capital. For the more that labor and capital 
produce, the greater grows the common wealth in which all 
may share. And in the value or rent of land is this generai 
gain expressed in a definite and concrete form. Here is 
a fund which the state may take while leaving to labor 
and capital their full reward. With increased activity of 
production this would commensurately increase. 

But to shift the burden of taxation from production and 
exchange to the value or rent of land would not merely be 
to give new stimulus to the production of wealth; it would 
be to open new opportunities. For under this system no 
one would care to hold land unless to use it, and land now 
withheld from use would everywhere be thrown open to 
improvement. 

The selling price of land would fall; land speculation 
would receive its death blow; land monopolization would 
no longer pay. Millions and millions of acres from which 
settlers are now shut out by high prices would be aban- 
doned by their present owners or sold to settlers upon 
nominal terms. And this not merely on the frontiers, but 
within what are now considered well settled districts. 
Within a hundred miles of San Francisco would be thus 
thrown open land enough to support, even with present 
modes of cultivation, an agricultural population equal to 
that now scattered from the Oregon boundary to the Mexi- 
can line—a distance of 800 miles. In the same degree would 
this be true of most of the Western States and ina great de- 
gree of the older Kastern States, for even in New York and 
Pennsylvania is population yet sparse as compared with the 
capacity of the land. And even in densely populated Eng- . 
land would such a policy throw open to cultivation many 
hundreds of thousands of acres now held as private parks, 
deer preserves, and shooting grounds. 

For this simple device of placing all taxes on the value 
of land would be in effect putting up the land at auction 
to whoever would pay the highest rent to the state. The 
demand for land fixes its value, and hence, if taxes were 
placed so as to very nearly consume that value, the man 


Chap. t. UPON THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH. 393 


who wished to hold land without using it would have to 
pay very nearly what it would be worth to any one who 
wanted to use it. 

And it must be remembered that this would apply, not 
merely to agricultural land, but to allland. Mineral land 
would be thrown open to use, just as agricultural land; and 
in the heart of a city no one could afford to keep land from 
its most profitable use, or on the outskirts to demand more 
for it than the use to which it could at the time be put . 
would warrant. Everywhere that land had attained a 
‘value, taxation, instead of operating, as now, as a fine upon 
improvement, would operate to force improvement. Who- 
ever planted an orchard, or sowed a field, or built a house, 
or erected a manufactory, no matter how costly, would 
have no more to pay in taxes than if he kept so much land 
idle. The monopolist of agricultural land would be taxed 
as much as though his land were covered with houses and 
barns, with crops and with stock. The owner of a vacant 
city lot would have to pay as much for the privilege of 
keeping other people off of it until he wanted to use it, as 
his neighbor who has a fine house upon his lot. It would 
cost as much to keep a row of tumble-down shanties upon 
valuable land as though it were covered with a grand hotel 
or a pile of great warehouses filled with costly goods. 

Thus, the bonus that wherever labor is most productive 
must now be paid before labor can be exerted would dis- 
appear. The farmer would not have to pay out half his 
means, or mortgage his labor for years, in order to obtain 
land to cultivate; the builder of a city homestead would 
not have to lay out as much for a small lot as for the house 
he puts upon it; the company that proposed to erect a man- 
ufactory would not have to expend a great part of their cap- 
ital for a site. And what would be paid from year to year 
to the state would be in lieu of all the taxes now levied 
upon improvements, machinery, and stock. 

Consider the effect of such a change upon the labor mar- 
ket, Competition would no longer be one-sided, as now. 
Instead of laborers competing with each other for employ- 


394 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


ment, and in their competition cutting down wages to the 
point of bare subsistence, employers would everywhere be 
competing for laborers, and wages would rise to the fair 
earnings of labor. For into the labor market would have 
entered the greatest of all competitors for the employment 
of labor, a competitor whose demand cannot be satisfied 
until want is satisfied—the demand of labor itself. The em- 
ployers of labor would not have merely to bid against other 
employers, all feeling the stimulus of greater trade and in- 
creased profits, but against the ability of laborers to be- 
come their own employers upon the natural opportunities 
freely opened to them by the tax which prevented monopo- 
lization. 

With natural opportunities thus free to labor; with capi- 
tal and improvements exempt from tax, and exchange *re- 
leased from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men 
unable to turn their labor into the things they are suffering 
for would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms 
which paralyze industry would cease; every wheel of pro- 
duction would be set in motion; demand would keep pace 
with supply, and supply with demand; trade would in- 
crease in every direction, and wealth augment on every 
hand. 


CHAPTER II. 
OF THE EFFECT UPON DISTRIBUTION AND THENCE UPON PRODUCTION. 


But great as they thus appear, the advantages of a trans- 
ferrence of all public burdens to a tax upon the value of 
land cannot be fully appreciated until we consider the 
effect upon the distribution of wealth. 

Tracing out the cause of the unequal distribution of 
wealth which appears in all civilized countries, with a con- 
stant tendency to greater and greater inequality as material 
progress goes on, we have found it in the fact that, as civili- 
zation advances, the ownership of land, now in private 
hands, gives a greater and greater power of appropriat- 
ing the wealth produced by labor and capital. 

Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct 
and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, would 
be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency to ine- 
quality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxation the 
whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be totally de- 
stroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality, as now, would 
then promote equality. Labor and capital would then re- 
ceive the whole produce, minus that portion taken by the 
state in the taxation of land values, which, being applied to 
public purposes, would be equally distributed in public 
benefits. 

That is to say, the wealth produced in every community 
would be divided into two portions. One part would be 
distributed in wages and interest between individual pro- 
ducers, according to the part each had taken in the work of 
production; the other part would go to the community asa 
whole, to be distributed in public benefits to all its mem- 
bers. In this all would share equally—the weak with the 
strong, young children and decrepit old men, the maimed, 


396 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book LX. 


the halt, and the blind, as well as the vigorous. And justly 
so—for while one part represents the result of individual - 
effort in production, the other represents the increased 
power with which the community as a whole aids the indi- 
vidual. 

Thus, as material progress tends to increase rent, were 
rent taken by the community for common purposes the 
very cause which now tends to produce inequality as ma- 
terial progress goes on would then tend to produce greater 
and greater equality. To fully understand this effect, let 
us revert to principles previously worked out. 

We have seen that wages and interest must everywhere be 
fixed by the rent line or margin of cultivation—that is to say, 
by the reward which labor and capital can secure on land 
for which no rent is paid; that the aggregate amount of 
wealth, which the aggregate of labor and capital employed 
in production will receive, will be the amount of wealth 
produced (or rather when we consider taxes, the net 
amount), minus what is taken as rent. 

We have seen that with material progress, as it is at 
present going on, there is a twofold tendency to the ad- 
vance of rent. Both are to the increase of the proportion 
of the wealth produced which goes as rent,and to the de- 
crease of the proportion which goes as wages and interest. 
But the first, or natural tendency, which results from the 
laws of social development, is to the increase of rent as a 
quantity, without the reduction of wages and interest as 
quantities, or even with their quantitative increase. The 
other tendeney, which results from the unnatural appropri- 
ation of land to private ownership, is to the increase of 
rent as a quantity by the reduction of wages and interest 
ag quantities. 

Now, it is evident that to take rent in taxation for public 
purposes, which virtually abolishes private ownership in 
land, would be to destroy the tendency to an absolute de- 
crease in wages and interest, by destroying the speculative 
monopolization of land and the speculative increase in rent. 
It would be to very largely increase wages and interest, by 


Chap. II. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 397 


throwing open natural opportunities now monopolized and 
reducing the price of land. Labor and capital would thus 
not merely gain what is now taken from them in taxation, 
but would gain by the positive decline in rent caused by 
the decrease in speculative land values. A new equilibri- 
um would be established, at which the common rate of 
wages and interest would be much higher than now. 

But this new equilibrium established, further advances 
in productive power (and the tendency in this direction 
would be greatly accelerated) would result in still increas- 
ing rent, not at the expense of wages and interest, but by 
new gains in production, which, as rent would be taken by 
the community for public uses, would accrue to the advan- 
tage of every member of the community. Thus, as ma- 
terial progress went on, the condition of the masses 
would constantly improve. Not merely one class would 
become richer, but all would become richer; not merely 
one class would have more of the necessaries, conve- 
niences, and elegancies of life, but all would have more. 
For, the increasing power of production, which comes with 
increasing population, with every new discovery in the 
productive arts, with every labor-saving invention, with 
every extension and facilitation of exchanges, could be 
monopolized by none. That part of the benefit which did 
not go directly to increase the reward of labor and capital 
would go to the state—that is to say, to the whole commu- 
nity. With all the enormous advantages, material and 
mental, of a dense population, would be united the freedom 
and equality that can now only be found in new and sparsely 
settled districts. ° | 

And, then, consider how equalization in the distribution 
of wealth would react upon production, everywhere pre- 
venting waste, everywhere increasing power. 

If it were possible to express in figures the direct pecu- 
niary loss which society suffers from the social mal-adjust- 
ments which condemn large classes to poverty and vice, 
the estimate would be appalling. England maintains over 
- a million paupers on official charity; the city of New York 


398 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book tx 


alone spends over seven million dollars a year in a similar 
way. But what is spent from public funds, what is spent 
by charitable societies and what is spent in individual char- 
ity, would, if aggregated, be but the first and smallest item 
in the account. The potential earnings of the labor thus 
going to waste, the cost of the reckless, improvident and 
idle habits thus generated; the pecuniary loss (to consider 
nothing more) suggested by the appalling statistics of mor- 
tality, and especially infant mortality, among the poorer 
classes; the waste indicated by the gin palaces or low grog- 
geries which increase as poverty deepens; the damage done 
by the vermin of society that are bred of poverty and des- 
titution—the thieves, prostitutes, beggars, and tramps; the 
cost of guarding society against them, are all items in the 
sum which the present unjust and unequal distribution of 
wealth takes from the aggregate which, with present means 
of production, society might enjoy. Nor yetshall we have 
completed the account. The ignorance and vice, the reck- 
lessness and immorality engendered by the ineqality in the 
distribution of wealth show themselves in the imbecility 
and corruption of government; and the waste of public 
revenues, and the still greater waste involved in the ignor- 
ant and corrupt abuse of public powers and functions, are 
their legitimate consequences. 

But the increase in wages and the opening of new — 
avenues of employment which would result from the 
appropriation of rent to public purposes, would not merely 
stop these wastes and relieve society of these enormous 
losses; new: power would be added to labor. It is buta 
truism that labor is most productive where its wages are 
largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world 
over. ) 

What is remarked between the efficiency of labor in the 
agricultural districts of England where different rates of 
wages prevail; what Brassey noticed as between the work 
done by his better paid English navvies and that done by 
the worse paid labor of the continent; what was evident in 
the United States as between slave labor and free labor; 


Chap. IT. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 399 


what is seen by the astonishing number of mechanics or 
servants required in India or China to get anything done, 
is universally true. The efficiency of labor always increases 
with the habitual wages of labor—for high wages mean in- 
creased self-respect, intelligence, hope, and energy, Man 
is not a machine, that will do so much and no more; he is 
not an animal, whose powers may reach thus far and no 
further. It is mind, not muscle, which is the great agent 
of production. The physical power evolved in the human. 
frame is one of the weakest of forces, but for the human 
intelligence the resistless currents of nature flow, and 
matter becomes plastic to the human will. To increase the 
comforts, and leisure, and independence of the masses is to 
increase their intelligence; it is to bring the brain to the 
aid of the hand; it is to engage in the common work of life 
the faculty which measures the animalcule and traces the 
orbits of the stars ! 

Who can say to what infinite powers the wealth produc. 
ing capacity of labor may not be raised by social adjustments 
which will give to the producers of wealth their fair pro- 
portion of its advantages and enjoyments! With present 
processes the gain would be simply incalculable, but just 
as wages are high, so do the invention and utilization of 
improved processes and machinery go on with greater ra- 
pidity and ease. That the wheat crops of Southern Russia 
are still reaped with the scythe and beaten out with the 
flail is simply because wages are there so low. American. 
invention, American aptitude for labor-saving processes 
and machinery are the result of the comparatively high 
wages that have prevailed in the United States. Had our 
producers been condemned to the low reward of the Egyp- 
tian fellah or Chinese coolie, we would be drawing water 
by hand and transporting goods on the shoulders of men. 
The increase in the reward of labor and capital would still 
further stimulate invention and hasten the adoption of 
improved processes, and these would truly appear, what in 
themselves they really are—an unmixed good. The inju- 
rious effects of labor-saving machinery upon the working 


400 EFFECTS. OF THE REMEDY. Book IX 


classes, that are now so often apparent, and that, in spite 
of all argument, make so many people regard machinery as 
an evil instead of a blessing, would disappear. Every new 
power engaged in the service of man would improve the 
condition of all. And from the general intelligence and 
mental activity springing from this general improvement of 
condition, would come new developments of power of 
which we as yet cannot dream. 

But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of the 
fact, that while thus preventing waste and thus adding to 
the efficiency of labor, the equalization in the distribu- 
tion of wealth that would result from the simple plan of 
taxation that I propose, must lessen the intensity with 
which wealth is pursued. It seems to me that in a condi- 
tion of society in which no one need fear poverty, no one 
would desire great wealth—at least, no one would take the 
trouble to strive and to strain for it as men do now. For, 
certainly, the spectacle of men who have only a few years 
to live, slaving away their time for the sake of dying rich, 
is in itself so unnatural and absurd, that in a state of soci- 
ety where the abolition of the fear of want had dissipated 
the envious admiration with which the masses of men now 
regard the possession of great riches, whoever would toil 
to acquire more than he cared to use would be looked upon 
as we would now look on a man who would thatch his head 
with half a dozen hats, or walk around in the hot sun with 
an overcoat on. When every one is sure of being able to 
get enough, no one will care to make a pack-horse of him- 
self. 

And though this incentive to production be withdrawn, 
can we not spare it? Whatever may have been its office in 
an earlier stage of development, it is not needed now. The 
dangers that menace our civilization do not come from the 
weakness of the springs of production. What it suffers 
from, and what, if a remedy be not applied, it must die 
from, is unequal distribution! 

Nor would the removal of this incentive, regarded only 
from the standpoint of production, be an unmixed loss 


Chap. II. UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 401 


For, that the aggregate of production is greatly reduced by 
the greed with which riches are pursued, is one of the most 
obtrusive facts of modern society. While, were this insane 
desire to get rich at any cost lessened, mental activities 
now devoted to scraping together riches would be trans- 
lated into far higher spheres of usefulness. 


18 


CHAPTER III. 
OF THE EFFECT UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 


When it is first proposed to put all taxes upon the value 
of land, and thus confiscate rent, all landholders are likely 
to take the alarm, and there will not be wanting appeals to 
the fears of small farm and homestead owners, who will be 
told that this is a proposition to rob them of their hard- 
earned property. But a moment’s reflection will show that 
this proposition should commend itself to all whose inter- 
ests as landholders do not largely exceed their interests as 
laborers or capitalists, or both. And further consideration 
will show that though the large landholders may lose rela- 
tively, yet even in their case there will be an absolute gain. 
For, the increase in production will be so great that labor 
and capital will gain very much more than will be lost to 
private land ownership, while in these gains, and in the 
greater ones involved in a more healthy social condition, 
the whole community, including the land owners them- 
selves, will share. 

In a preceding chapter I have gone over the question of 
what is due to the present landholders, and have shown 
that they have no claim to compensation. But there is still 
another ground on which we may dismiss all idea of com- 
pensation. They will not really be injured. 

It is manifest, of course, that the change I propose will 
greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether of hand 
or of head—laborers, operatives, mechanics, clerks, pro- 
fessional men of al! sorts. It is manifest, also, that it will 
benefit all those who live partly by wages and partly by the 
earnings of their capital—storekeepers, merchants, manu- 
facturers, employing or undertaking producers and ex- 
changers of all sorts—from the peddler or drayman to the 


Chap. IIL. UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 403 


railroad or steamship owner—and it is likewise manifest 
that it will increase the-incomes of those whose incomes 
are drawn from the earnings of capital, or from invest- 
ments other than in lands, save perhaps the holders of 
government bonds or other securities bearing fixed rates of 
interest, which will probably depreciate in selling value, 
owing to the rise in the general rate of interest, though the 
income from them will remain the same. 

Take, now, the case of the homestead owner—the me- 
chanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has secured 
himself a house and lot, where he lives, and which he 
contemplates with satisfaction as a place from which his 
family cannot be ejected in case of his death. He will not 
be injured; on the contrary, he will be the gainer. The 
selling value of his lot will diminish—theoretically it will 
entirely disappear. But its usefulness to him will not dis- 
appear. It will serve his purpose as well as ever. While, 
as the value of all other lots will diminish or disappear in 
the same ratio, he retains the same security of always havy- 
ing a lot that he had before. That is to say, he is a loser 
only as the man who has bought himself a pair of boots 
may be said to be a loser by a subsequent fall in the price 
of boots. His boots will be just as useful to him, and the 
next pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the home- 
stead owner, his lot will be as useful, and should he look 
forward to getting a larger lot, or having his children, as they 
grow up, get homesteads of their own, he will, even in the 
matter of lots, be the gainer. And inthe present, other things 
considered, he will be much the gainer. For though he 
will have more taxes to pay upon his land, he will be re- 
leased from taxes upon his house and improvements, upon 
his furniture and personal property, upon all that he and 
his family eat, drink, and wear, while his earnings will be 
largely increased by the rise of wages, the constant em- 
ployment, and the increased briskness of trade. His only 
loss will be, if he wants to sell his lot without getting an- 
other, and this will be a small loss compared with the 
great gain. 


404 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


And so with the farmer. I speak not now of the farmers 
who never touch the handles of a plow, who cultivate 
thousands of acres and enjoy incomes like those of the rich 
Southern planters before the war; but of the working 
farmers who constitute such a large class in the United States 
—men who own small farms, which they cultivate with the 
aid of their boys, and perhaps some hired help, and who in 
Europe would be called peasant proprietors. Paradoxical 
as it may appear to these men until they understand the 
full bearings of the proposition, of all classes above that 
of the mere laborer they have most to gain by placing all 
taxes upon the value of land. That they do not now get 
as good a living as their hard work ought to give them, 
they generally feel, though they may not be able to trace 
the cause. The fact is that taxation, as now levied, falls on 
them with peculiar severity. They are taxed on all their 
improvements—houses, barns, fences, crops, stock. The 
personal property which they have cannot be as readily 
concealed or undervalued as can the more valuable kinds 
which are concentrated in the cities. They are not only 
taxed on personal property and improvements, which the 
owners of unused land escape, but their land is generally 
taxed at a higher rate than land held on speculation, 
simply because it is improved. But further than this, all 
taxes imposed on commodities, and especially the taxes 
which, like our protective duties, are imposed with a view of — 
raising the prices of commodities, fall on the farmer without 
mitigation. For in a country like the United States, which 
exports agricultural produce, the farmer cannot be pro- 
tected. Whoever gains, he must lose. Some years ago the 
Free Trade League of New York published a broadside 
containing cuts of various articles of necessity marked with 
the duties imposed by the tariff, and which read something 
in this wise: ‘‘ The farmer rises in the morning and draws 
on his pantaloons taxed 40 per cent. and his boots taxed 30 
per cent., striking a light with a match taxed 200 per cent.,” 
and so on, following him through the day and through life, 
until, killed by taxation, he is lowered into the grave with a 


Chap. UZ UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 405 


rope taxed 45 per cent. This is but a graphic illustration 
of the manner in which such taxes ultimately fall. The 
farmer would be a great gainer by the substitution of a 
single tax upon the value of land for all these taxes, for 
the taxation of land values would fall with greatest weight, 
not upon the agricultural districts, where land values are 
comparatively small, but upon the towns and cities where 
land values are high; whereas taxes upon personal property 
and improvements fall as heavily in the country as in the 
city. And in sparsely settled districts there would be 
hardly any taxes at all for the farmer to pay. For taxes, 
being levied upon the value of the bare land, would fall as 
heavily upon unimproved as upon improved land. Acre 
for acre, the improved and cultivated farm, with its build- 
ings, fences, orchard, crops, and stock could be taxed no 
more than unused land of equal quality. The result would 
be that speculative values would be kept down, and that 
cultivated and improved farms would have no taxes to pay 
until the country around them had been well settled. In 
fact, paradoxical as it may at first seem to them, the effect 
of putting all taxation upon the value of land would be to 
relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation. 

But the great gain of the working farmer can only be 
seen when the effect upon the distribution of population 
is considered. The destruction of speculative land val- 
ues would tend to diffuse population where it is too 
dense and to concentrate it where it is too sparse; to sub- 
stitute for the tenement house, homes surrounded by 
eardens, and to fully settle agricultural districts before 
people were driven far from neighbors to look for land. 
The people of the cities would thus get more of the pure 
air and sunshine of the country, the people of the country 
more of the economies and social life of the city. If, as is 
doubtless the case, the application of machinery tends to 
large fields, agricultural population will assume the primi- 
tive form and cluster in villages. The life of the average 
farmer is now unnecessarily dreary. He is not only com- 
pelled to work early and late, but he is cut off by the 


406 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


sparseness of population from the conveniences, the amuse- 
ments, the educational facilities, and the social and intellec- 
tual opportunities that come with the closer contact of 
man with man. He would be far better off in all these re- 
spects, and his labor would be far more productive, if he 
and those around him held no more land than they wanted 
to use.* While his children, as they grew up, would neither 
be so impelled to seek the excitement of a city nor would 
they be driven so far away to seek farms of their own. 
Their means of living would be in their own hands, and at 
home. 

In short, the working farmer is both a laborer and a capi- 
talist, as well as a land owner, and it is by his labor and 
capital that his living is made. His loss would be nominal; 
his gain would be real and great. 

In varying degrees is this true of all landholders. Many 
landholders are laborers of one sort or another. And 
it would be hard to find a land owner not a laborer, who is 
not also a capitalist—while the general rule is, that the 
larger the land owner the greater the capitalist. So true is 
this that in common thought the characters are confounded. 
Thus to put all taxes on the value of land, while it would 
be to largely reduce all great fortunes, would in no 
case leave the rich man penniless. The Duke of West- 
minster, who owns a considerable part of the site of London, 
is probably the richest land owner in the world. To take 
all his ground rents by taxation would largely reduce his 
enormous income, but would still leave him his buildings 
and all the income from them, and doubtless much personal 
property in various other shapes. He would still have all 
he could by any possibility enjoy, and a much better state 
of society in which to enjoy it. 


* Besides the enormous increase in the productive power of labor which would re- 
sult from the better distribution of population, there would be also a similar economy 
in the productive power of land. The concentration of population“in cities fed by 
the exhaustive cultivation of large, sparsely populated areas, results in a literal 
draining into the sea of the elements of fertility. How enormous this waste is may 
be seen from the calculations that have been made as to the sewage of our cities, and 
its practical result is to be seen in the diminishing productiveness of agriculture in 
es sections. Ina great part of the United States we are steadily exhausting our 
lands, 


Uhap. LIT. UPON INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES. 407 


So would the Astors of New York remain very rich. 
And so, I think, it will be seen throughout—this measure 
would make no one poorer but such as could be made a 
great deal poorer without being really hurt. It would cut 
down great fortunes, but it would impoverish no one. 

Wealth would not only be enormously increased; it would 
be equally distributed. I do not mean that each individual 
would get the same amount of wealth. That would not be 
equal distribution, so long as different individuals have 
different powers and different desires. But I mean that 
wealth would be distributed in accordance with the degree 
in which the industry, skill, knowledge, or prudence of each 
contributed to the common stock. The great cause which 
concentrates wealth in the hands of those who do not pro- 
duce, and takes it from the hands of those who do, would 
be gone. The inequalities that continued to exist would 
be those of nature, not the artificial inequalities produced 
by the denial of natural law. The non-producer would no 
longer roll in luxury while the producer got but the barest 
necessities of animal existence. 

The monopoly of the land gone, there need be no fear of 
Jarge fortunes. For then the riches of any individual must 
consist of wealth, properly so-called—of wealth, which is 
the product of labor, and which constantly tends to dissi- 
pation, for national debts, I imagine, would not long survive 
the abolition of the system from which they spring. All 
fear of great fortunes might be dismissed, for when every 
one gets what he fairly earns, no one can get more than he 
fairly earns. How many men are there who fairly earn a 
million dollars? 


™“, 


CHAPTER IV. 


OF THE CHANGES THAT WOULD BE WROUGHT IN SOCIAL ORGANe 
IZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 


We are dealing only with general principles. There are 
some matters of detail—such as those arising from the di- 
vision of revenues between local and general governments 
—which upon application of these principles would come 
up, but these it is not necessary here to discuss. When 
once principles are settled, details will be readily adjusted. 

Nor without tou much elaboration is it possible to notice 
all the changes which would be wrought, or would become 
possible, by a change which would re-adjust the very found- 
ation of society, but to some main features let me call atten- 
tion. 

Noticeable among these is the great simplicity which 
would become possible in government. To collect taxes, 
to prevent and punish evasions, to check and countercheck 
revenues drawn from so many distinct sources, now make 
up probably three-fourths, perhaps seven-eighths of the 
business of government, outside of the preservation of 
order, the maintenance of the military arm, and the admin- 
istration of justice. An immense and complicated net- 
work of governmental machinery would thus be dispensed 
with. 

In the administration of justice there would be a like 
saving of strain. Much of the civil business of our courts 
arises from disputes as to ownership of land. These would 
cease when the state was virtually acknowledged as the sole 
owner of land, and all occupiers became merely rent-paying 
tenants. The growth of morality consequent upon the 
cessation of want would tend to a like diminution in other 
civil business of the courts, which could be hastened by the 


Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 409 


adoption of the common sense proposition of Bentham to 
abolish all laws for the collection of debts and the enforce- 
ment of private contracts. The rise of wages, the opening 
of opportunities for all to make an easy and comfortable 
living, would at once lessen and would soon eliminate from 
society the thieves, swindlers, and other classes of criminals 
who spring from the unequal distribution of wealth. Thus 
the administration of. the criminal law, with all its par- 
aphernalia of policemen, detectives, prisons, and peni- 
tentiaries, would, like the administration of the civil 
law, cease to make such a drain upon the vital force 
and attention of society. We should get rid, not only of 
many judges, bailiffs, clerks, and prison keepers, but of 
the great host of lawyers who are now maintained at 
the expense of producers; and talent now wasted in legal 
subtleties would be turned to higher pursuits. 

The legislative, judicial, and executive functions of gov- 
ernment would in this way be vastly simplified. Nor can 
I think that the public debts and the standing armies, 
which are historically the outgrowth of the change from 
feudal to allodial tenures, would long remain after the re- 
version to the old idea that the land of a country is the 
common right of the people of the country. The former 
could readily be paid off by a tax which would not lessen 
the wages of labor nor check production, and the latter the 
growth of intelligence and independence among the masses 
(aided, perhaps, by the progress of invention, which is rev- 
olutionizing the military art) must soon cause to dis- 
appear. 

Society would thus approach the ideal of Jeffersonian 
democracy, the promised land of Herbert Spencer, the ab- 
olition of government. But of government only as a 
directing and repressive power. It would at the same time, 
and in the same degree, become possible for it to realize 
the dream of socialism. All this simplification and abro- 
gation of the present functions of government would make 
possible the assumption of certain other functions which 
are now pressing for recognition. Government could take 


410 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


upon itself the transmission of messages by telegraph, as 
well as by mail; of building and operating railroads, as well 
as of opening and maintaining common roads. With 
present functions so simplified and reduced, functions such 
as these could be assumed without danger or strain, and 
would be under the supervision of public attention, which 
is now distracted. There would be a great and increasing 
surplus revenue from the taxation of land values, for mater- 
ial progress, which would go on with greatly accelerated 
rapidity, would tend constantly to increase rent. This 
revenue arising from the common property could be applied 
to the common benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta. 
We might not establish public tables—they would be un- 
necessary; but we could establish public baths, museums, 
libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing halls, 
theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, 
play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive 
power, as well as water, might be conducted through our 
streets at public expense; our roads be lined with fruit 
trees; discoverers and inventors rewarded, scientific inves- 
tigations supported; and in a thousand ways the public 
revenues made to foster efforts for the public benefit. We 
should reach the ideal of the socialist, but not throngh 
governmental repression. Government would change its 
character, and would become the administration of a great 
co-operative society. It would become merely the agency 
by which the common property was administered for the 
common benefit, 

Does this seem impracticable? Consider for a moment 
the vast changes that would be wrought in social life by 
a change which would assure to labor its full reward; 
which would banish want and the fear of want; and give 
to the humblest freedom to develop in natural symmetry. 

In thinking of the possibilities of social organization, we 
are apt to assume that greed is the strongest of human mo- 
tives, and that systems of administration can only be safely 
based upon the idea that the fear of punishment is neces- 
sary to keep men honest—that selfish interests are always 


Chap. IV. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 411 


stronger than general interests. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. 

From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify which 
men tread everything pure and noble under their feet; 
to which they sacrifice all the higher possibilities of life; 
which converts civility into a hollow pretense, patriotism 
into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy; which makes so 
much of civilized existence an Ishmaelitish warfare, of 
which the weapons are cunning and fraud? 

Does it not spring from the existence of want? Carlyle 
somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the mod- 
ern Englishman is most afraid. And he is right. Poverty 
is the open-mouthed, relentless hell which yawns beneath 
civilized society. And it is hell enough. The Vedas de- 
clare no truer thing than when the wise crow Bushanda 
tells the eagle-bearer of Vishnu that the keenest pain is in 
poverty. For poverty is not merely deprivation; it means 
shame, degradation; the searing of the most sensitive 
parts of our moral and mental nature as with hot irons; the 
denial of the strongest impulses and the sweetest affections; 
the wrenching of the most vital nerves. You love your 
wife, you love your children; but would it not be easier to 
see them die than to see them reduced to the pinch of want 
in which large classes in every highly civilized community 
live? The strongest of animal passions is that with which 
we cling to life, but it is an every-day occurrence in civil- 
ized societies for men to put poison to their mouths or 
pistols to their heads from fear of poverty, and for one who 
does this there are probably a hundred who have the desire, 
but are restrained by instinctive shrinking, by religious 
considerations, or by family ties. 

From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men 
should make every effort to escape. With the impulse to 
self-preservation and self-gratification combine nobler feel- 
ings, and love as well as fear urges in the struggle. Many 
aman does a mean thing, a dishonest thing, a greedy and 
grasping and unjust thing, in the effort to place above 
want, or the fear of want, mother or wife or children, 


412 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book LX. 


And out of this condition of things arises a public 
opinion which enlists, as an impelling power in the struggle 
to grasp and to keep, one of the strongest—perhaps with 
many men the very strongest—springs of human action. The 
desire for approbation, the feeling that urges us to win the 
respect, admiration, or sympathy of our fellows, is instinct- 
ive and universal. Distorted sometimes into the most 
abnormal manifestations, it may yet be everywhere per- 
ceived. It is potent with the veriest savage, as with the 
most highly cultivated member of the most polished soci- 
ety; it shows itself with the first gleam of intelligence, and 
persists to the last breath. It triumphs over the love of 
ease, over the sense of pain, over the dread of death. It 
dictates the most trivial and the most important actions. 

The child just beginning to toddle or to talk will make 
new efforts as its cunning little tricks excite attention and 
laughter; the dying master of the world gathers his robes 
around him, that he may pass away as becomes a king; 
Chinese mothers will deform their daughters’ feet by cruel 
stocks, European women will sacrifice their own comfort 
and the comfort of their families to similar dictates of 
fashion; the Polynesian, that he may excite admiration by 
his beautiful tattvo, will hold himself still while his flesh 
is torn by sharks’ teeth; the North American Indian, tied 
to the stake, will bear the most fiendish tortures without a 
moan, and, that he may be respected and admired as a 
great brave, will taunt his tormentors to new cruelties. 
It is this that leads the forlorn hope; it is this that trims 
the lamp of the pale student; it is this that impels men to 
strive, to strain, to toil, and to die. It is this that raised 
the pyramids and that fired the Ephesian dome. 

Now, men admire what they desire. How sweet to the 
storm-stricken seems the safe harbor; food to the hungry, 
drink to the thirsty, warmth to the shivering, rest to the 
weary, power to the weak, knowledge to him in whom the 
intellectual yearnings of the soul have been aroused. And 
thus the sting of want and the fear of want make men ad- 
mire above all things the possession of riches, and to 


Chap. IV UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 413 


become wealthy is to become respected, and admired, and 
influential. Get money—honestly, if you can, but at any 
rate get money! This is the lesson that society is daily 
and hourly dinning in the ears of its members. Men 
instinctively admire virtue and truth, but the sting of want 
and the fear of want make them even more strongly admire 
the rich and sympathize with the fortunate. It is well to 
be honest and just, and men will commend it; but he who 
by fraud and injustice gets him a million dollars will have 
more respect, and admiration, and influence, more eye 
service and lip service, if not heart service, than he who 
refuses it. The one may have his reward in the future; he 
may know that his name is writ in the Book of Life, and 
that for him is the white robe and the palm branch of the 
victor against temptation; but the other has his reward in 
the present. His name is writ in the list of ‘‘ our substan- 
tial citizens;” he has the courtship of men and the flattery 
of women; the best pew in the church and the personal re- 
gard of the eloquent clergyman who in the name of Christ 
preaches the Gospel of Dives, and tones down into a 
meaningless flower of Eastern speech the stern metaphor of 
the camel and the needle’s eye. He may be a patron of 
arts, a Mecenas to men of letters; may profit by the con- 
verse of the intelligent, and be polished by the attrition of 
the refined. His alms may feed the poor, and help the 
struggling, and bring sunshine into desolate places; and 
noble public institutions commemorate, after he is gone, 
his name and his fame, It is not in the guise of a hideous 
monster, with horns and tail, that Satan tempts the chil- 
dren of men, but as an angel of light. His promises are 
not alone of the kingdoms of the world, but of mental 
and moral principalities and powers. He appeals not only 
to the animal appetites, but to the cravings that stir in 
man because he is more than an animal. 

Take the case of those miserable ‘‘men with muck- 
rakes,” who are to be seen in every community as plainly 
aS Bunyan saw their type in his vision—who, long after 
they have accumulated wealth enough to satisfy every de- 


414 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 


sire, go on working, scheming, striving to add riches to 
riches. It was the desire ‘“‘to be something;” nay, in 
many cases, the desire to do noble and generous deeds, 
that started them on a career of money getting. And what 
compels them to it long after every possible need is satisfied, 
what urges them still with unsatisfied and ravenous greed, 
is not merely the force of tyrannous habit, but the subtler 
gratifications which the possession of riches gives—the 
sense of power and influence, the sense of being looked up 
to and respected, the sense that their wealth not merely 
raises them above want, but makes them men of mark in 
the community in which they live. It is this that makes 
the rich man so loth to part with his money, so anxious to 
get more. 

Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest im- 
pulses of our nature, the sanctions of law and the precepts 
of religion can effect but little; and the wonder is, not that 
men are so self-seeking, but that they are not much more 
so. That under present circumstances men are not more 
grasping, more unfaithful, more selfish than they are, 
proves the goodness and fruitfulness of human nature, the 
ceaseless flow of the perennial fountains from which its 
moral qualities are fed. All of us have mothers; most of 
us have children, and so faith, and purity, and unselfish- 
ness can never be utterly banished from the world, how- 
soever bad be social adjustments. 

But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent for 
good. ‘The change I have proposed would destroy the con- 
ditions that distort impulses in themselves beneficent, and 
would transmute the forces which now tend to disintegrate 
society into forces which would tend to unite and purify it. 

Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the 
benefit of the whole community that fund which the growth 
of the community creates, and want and the fear of want 
would be gone. The springs of production would be set 
free, and the enormous increase of wealth would give the 
poorest ample comfort. Men would no more worry about 
finding employment than they worry about finding air te 


Chap. IV’. | UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 415 


breathe; they need have no more care about physical 
necessities than do the lilies of the field. The progress of 
science, the march of invention, the diffusion of knowledge, 
would bring their benefits to all. 

With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the ad- 
miration of riches would decay, and men would seek the 
respect and approbation of their fellows in other modes 
than by the acquisition and display of wealth. In this way 
there would be brought to the management of public 
affairs and the administration of common funds, the skill, 
the attention, the fidelity, and integrity that can now only 
be secured for private interests, and a railroad or gas works 
might be operated on public account, not only more eco- 
nomically and efficiently than as at present, under joint 
stock management, but as economically and efficiently as 
would be possible under a single ownership. The prize of 
the Olympian games, that called forth the most strenuous 
exertions of all Greece was but a wreath of wild olive; for 
a bit of ribbon men have over and over again performed 
services no money could have bought. 

Short-sighted is the philosophy which ccunts on selfish- 
ness as the master motive of human action. It is blind to 
facts of which the world is full. It sees not the present, 
and reads not the past aright. If you would move men to 
action, to what shall you appeal? Not to their pockets, but 
to their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to sympathy. 
Self-interest is, as if were, a mechanical force—potent, it is 
true; capable of large and wide results. But there is in 
human nature what may be likened to a chemical force; 
which melts and fuses and overwhelms; to which nothing 
seems impossible. ‘‘ All that aman hath willhe give for his 
life’ —that is self-interest. Butin loyalty to higher impulses 
men will give even life. 

It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every 
yeople with heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that 
on every page of the world’s history bursts out in sudden 
splendor of noble deeds or sheds the soft radiance of 
benignant lives. It was not selfishness that turned 


416 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


Gautama’s back to his royal home or bade the Maid of Or- 
leans lift the sword from the altar; that held the Three 
Hundred in the Pass of Thermopyle, or gathered into 
Winkelried’s bosom the sheaf of spears; that chained 
Vincent de Paul to the bench of the galley, or brought little 
starving children, during the Indian famine, tottering to 
the relief stations with yet weaker starvelings in their arms! 

Call it religion, patriotism, sympathy, the enthusiasm for 
humanity, or the love of God—give it what name you will; 
there is yet a force which overcomes and drives out selfish- 
ness; a force which is the electricity of the moral universe; 
a force beside which all others are weak. Everywhere that 
men have lived it has shown its power, and to-day, as ever, 
the world is full of it. To be pitied is the man who has 
never seen and never felt it. Look around! among com- 
mon men and women, amid the care and the struggle of 
daily life, in the jar of the noisy street and amid the 
squalor where want hides—every here and there is the 
darkness lighted with the tremulous play of its lambent 
flames. He who has not seen it has walked with shut eyes. 
He who looks may see, as says Plutarch, that ‘‘the soul 
has a principle of kindness in itself, and is born to love, 
as well as to perceive, think, or remember.” 

And this force of forces—that now goes to waste or as- 
sumes perverted forms—we may use for the strengthening, 
and building up, and ennobiling of society, if we but will, 
just as we now use physical forces that once seemed but 
powers of destruction. All we have to do is but to give it 
freedom and scope. The wrong that produces inequality; 
the wrong that in the midst of abundance tortures men 
with want or harries them with the fear of want; that stunts 
them physically, degrades them intellectually, and distorts 
them morally, is what alone prevents harmonious social 
development. For ‘‘all that is from the gods is full of 
providence. We are made for co-operation—lke feet, like 
hands, like eyebrows, like the rows of the upper and lower 
teeth.”’ 

There are people into whose heads it never enters to con- 


Chap. IV UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 417 


ceive of any better state of society than that which now 
exists—who imagine that the idea that there could be a 
state of society in which greed would be banished, prisons 
stand empty, individual interests be subordinated to gen- 
eral interests, and no one seek to rob or to oppress his 
neighbor, is but the dream of impracticable dreamers, for 
whom these practical level-headed men who pride them- 
selves on recognizing facts as they are, have a hearty 
contempt. But such men—though some of them write 
books, and some of them occupy the chairs of universities, 
and some of them stand in pulpits—do not think. If they 
were accustomed to dine in such eating houses as are to be 
found in the lower quarters of London and Paris, where 
the knives and forks are chained to the table, they would 
deem it the natural, ineradicable disposition of man to carry 
off the knife and fork with which he has eaten. 

Take a company of well-bred men and women dining 
together. There is no struggling for food, no attempt on 
the part of any one to get more than his neighbor; no at- 
tempt to gorge or to carry off. On the contrary, each 
one is anxious to help his neighbor before he partakes him- — 
self; to offer to others the best rather than pick it out for 
himself; and should any one show the slightest disposition 
to prefer the gratification of his own appetite to that of the 
others, or in any way to act the pig or pilferer, the swift 
and heavy penalty of social contempt and ostracism would 
show how such conduct is reprobated by common opinion. 

All this is so common as to excite no remark, as to seem 
the natural state of things. Yet itis no more natural that 
men should not be greedy of food than that they should 
not be greedy of wealth. They are greedy of food when 
they are not assured that there will be a fair and equitable 
distribution which will give each enough. But when these 
conditions are assured, they cease to be greedy of food. 
And so in society, as at present constituted, men are greedy 
of wealth because the conditions of distribution are so un- 
just that instead of each being sure of enough, many are 
_ certain to be condemned to want. It is the ‘‘devil catch 


418 EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book LX. 


the hindmost” of present social adjustments that causes 
the race and scramble for wealth, in which all considerations 
of justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are trampled 
under foot; in which men forget their own souls, and 
struggle to the very verge of the grave for what they can- 
not take beyond. But an equitable distribution of wealth, 
that would exempt all from the fear of want, would de- 
stroy the greed of wealth, just as in polite society the greed 
of food has been destroyed. 

On the crowded steamers of the early California lines 
there was often a marked difference between the manners of 
the steerage and the cabin, which illustrates this principle of 
human nature. An abundance of food was provided for 
the steerage as for the cabin, but in the former there were 
no regulations which insured efficient service, and the meals 
became a scramble. In the cabin, on the contrary, where 
each was allotted his place and there was no fear that every- 
one would not get enough, there was no such scrambling 
and waste as were witnessed in the steerage. The difference 
was not in the character of the people, but simply in this 
fact. The cabin passenger transferred to the steerage 
would participate in the greedy rush, and the steerage 
passenger transferred to the cabin would at once become 
decorous and polite. The same difference would show 
itself in society in general were the present unjust distri- 
bution of wealth replaced by a just distribution. 

Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and refined 
society, in which.all the coarser passions are held in check, 
not by force, not by law, but by common opinion and the 
mutual desire of pleasing. If this is possible for a part of 
a community, it is possible for a whole community. There 
are states of society in which every one has to go armed— 
in which every one has to hold himself in readiness to de- 
fend person and property with the strong hand. If we 
have progressed beyond that, we may progress still further. 

But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of want, 
would be to destroy the stimulus to exertion; men would 
become simply idlers, and such a happy state of general 


Chap. IV. | UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 419 


comfort and content would be the death of progress. This 
is the old slaveholders’ argument, that men can only be 
driven to labor with the lash. Nothing is more untrue. 

Want might be banished, but desire would remain. Man 
is the unsatisfied animal. He has but begun to explore, 
and the universe lies before him. Each step that he takes 
opens new vistas and kindles new desires. He is the con- 
structive animal; he builds, he improves, he invents, and 
puts together, and the greater the thing he does, the 
greater the thing he wants to do. He is more than an 
animal. Whatever be the intelligence that breathes through 
nature, it is in that likeness that man is made. The steam- 
ship, driven by her throbbing engines through the sea, isin 
kind, though not in degree, as much a creation as the 
whale that swims beneath. The telescope and the micro- 
scope, what are they but added eyes, which man has made 
for himself; the soft webs and fair colors in which our 
women array themselves, do they not answer to the plum- 
age that nature gives the bird? Man must be doing 
something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him 
throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sun- 
shine is not a natural, but an abnormal man. 

As soon as achild can command its muscles, it will begin 
to make mud pies or dress a doll; its play is but the imita- 
tion of the work of its elders; its very destructiveness 
arises from the desire to be doing something, from the 
satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish something. There 
is no such thing as the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of 
pleasure. Ourvery amusements only amuse as they are, or 
simulate, the learning or the doing of something. The 
moment they cease to appeal either to our inquisitive or to 
our constructive powers, they cease to amuse. It will spo! 
the interest of the novel reader to be told just how the 
story will end; it is only the chance and the skill involved 
in the game that enable the card-player to ‘‘ kill time’’ by 
shuffling bits of pasteboard. The luxurious frivolities of 
Versailles were only possible to human beings because the 
King thought he was governing a kingdom and the cour- 


490 ~ EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book IX. 


tiers were in pursuit of fresh honors and new pensions. 
People who lead what are called lives of fashion and 
pleasure must have some other object in view, or they 
would die of ennui; they only support it because they | 
imagine that they are gaining position, making friends, or 
improving the chances of their children. Shut aman up, 
and deny him employment, and he must either die or go 
mad. 

It is not labor in itself that is repugnant to man; it is 
not the natural necessity for exertion which isa curse. It 
is only labor which produces nothing—exertion of which 
he cannot see the results. To toil day after day, and yet 
get but the necessaries of life, this is indeed hard; it is like 
the infernal punishment of compelling a man to pump lest 
he be drowned, or to trudge on a treadmill lest he be 
crushed. But, released from this necessity, men would 
but work the harder and the better, for then they would 
work as their inclinations led them; then would they 
seem to be really doing something for themselves or for 
others. Was Humboldt’s life anidle one? Did Franklin 
find no occupation when he retired from the printing busi- 
ness with enough to live on? Is Herbert Spencer a lageard? 
Did Michael Angelo paint for board and clothes? 

The fact is that the work which improves the condition 
of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and in- 
creases power, and enriches literature, and elevates thought, 
is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, 
driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by 
animal necessities. Itis the work of men who perform it 
for its own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or 
drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want 
was abolished, work of this sort would be enormously ins 
creased. 

I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating rent 
in the manner I have proposed, would be to cause the 
organization of labor, wherever large capitals were used, to 
assume the co-operative form, since the more equal diffu- 
sion of wealth would unite capitalist and laborer in the 


Chap. [V. UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE, ~° 421 


same person. But whether this would be so or not is of 
little moment. The hard toil of routine labor would dis- 
appear. Wages would be too high and opportunities too 
great to compel any man to stint and starve the higher 
qualities of his nature, and in every avocation the brain 
would aid the hand. Work, even of the coarser kinds, would 
become a lightsome thing, and the tendency of modern 
production to subdivision would not involve monotony or 
the contraction of ability in the worker; but would be re- 
lieved by short hours, by change, by the alternation of 
intellectual with manual occupations. There would result, 
not only the utilization of productive forces now going to 
waste; not only would our present knowledge, now so im- 
perfectly applied, be fully used; but from the mobility of 
labor and the mental activity which would be generated, 
there would result advances in the methods of production 
that we cannot now imagine. 

For, greatest of all the enormous wastes which the 
present constitution of society involves, is that of mental 
power. How infinitesimal are the forces that concur to the 
advance of civilization, as compared to the forces that lie 
latent! How few are the thinkers, the discoverers, the 
inventors, the organizers, as compared with the great mass 
of the people! Yet such men are born in plenty; it is the 
conditions that permit so few to develope. There are 
among men infinite diversities of aptitude and inclination, 
as there are such infinite diversities in physical structure 
that among a million there will not be two that cannot be 
told apart. But, both from observation and reflection, I 
am inclined to think that, the differences of natural power 
are no greater than the differences of stature or of physical 
strength. Turn to the lives of great men, and see how 
easily they might never have been heard of. Had Cesar 
come of a proletarian family; had Napoleon entered the 
world a few years earlier; had Columbus gone into the 
Church instead of going to sea; had Shakespeare been ap- 
prenticed to a cobbler or chimney-sweep; had Sir Isaac 
Newton been assigned by fate the education and the toil of 


422, EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. ‘Dookal X. 


an agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam Smith been born in 
the coal hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get his living 
as a factory operative, what would their talents have 
availed? But there would have been, it will be said, other 
Ceesars or Napoleons, Columbuses or Shakespeares, New- 
tons, Smiths or Spencers. This is true. And it shows how 
prolific is our human nature. As the common worker is on 
need transformed into queen bee, so, when circumstances 
favor his development, what might otherwise pass for a com- 
mon man rises into a hero or leader, discoverer or teacher, 
sage or saint. So widely has the sower scattered the seed, 
so strong is the germinative force that bids it bud and blos- 
som. But, alas, for the stony ground, and the birds and 
the tares! For one who attains his full stature, how many 
are stunted and deformed. 

The will within us is the ultimate fact of consciousness. 
Yet how little have the best of us, in acquirements, in posi- 
tion, even in character, that may be credited entirely to 
ourselves; how much to the influences that have molded 
us. Who is there, wise, learned, discreet, or strong, who 
might not, were he to trace the inner history of his life, 
turn, like the Stoic Emperor, to give thanks to the gods, 
that by this one and that one, and here and there, good 
examples have been set him, noble thoughts have reached 
him, and happy opportunities opened before him. Who is 
there, that, with his eyes about him, has reached the 
meridian of life, who has not sometimes echoed the thought 
of the pious Englishman, as the criminal passed to the 
gallows, ‘‘ But for the grace of God, there go I.” How 
little does heredity count as compared with conditions. 
This one, we say, is the result of a thousand years of Euro- 
pean progress, and that one of a thousand years of Chinese 
petrifaction; yet, placed an infant in the heart of China, 
and but for the angle of the eye or the shade of the hair, 
the Caucasian would grow up as those around him, using 
the same speech, thinking the same thoughts, exhibiting 
the same tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her 
cradle with an infant of the slums, and will the blood 


Chap. IV, UPON SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND SOCIAL LIFE. 423 


of a hundred Harls give you a refined and cultured 
woman ? ' 

To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all classes 
leisure, and comfort, and independence, the decencies and 
refinements of life, the opportunities of mental and moral 
development, would be like turning water into a desert. 
The sterile waste would clothe itself with verdure, and the 
barren places where life seemed banned would ere long be 
dappled with the shade of trees and musical with the song 
of birds. Talents now hidden, virtues unsuspected, would 
come forth to make human life richer, fuller, happier, no- 
bler. For in these round men who are stuck into three- 
cornered hoses, and three-cornered men who are jammed 
into round holes; in these men who are wasting their ener- 
gies in the scramble to be rich; in these who in factories are 
turned into machines, or are chained by necessity to bench 
or plow; in these children who are growing up in squalor, 
and vice, and ignorance, are powers of the highest order, 
talents the most splendid. They need but the opportunity 
to bring them forth. 

Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave 
that opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the pic- 
ture; its colors grow too bright for words to paint. Con- 
sider the moral elevation, the intellectual activity, the social 
life. Consider how by a thousand actions and interactiong 
the members of every community are linked together, and 
how in the present condition of things even the fortunate 
few who stand upon the apex of the social pyramid must 
suffer, though they know it not, from the want, ignorance, 
and degradation that are underneath. Consider these 
things, and then say whether the change I propose would 
not be for the benefit of every one—even the greatest land- 
holder? Would he not be safer of the future of his children 
in leaving them penniless in such a state of society than in 
leaving them the largest fortune in this? Did such a state 
of society anywhere exist, would he not buy entrance to it 
cheaply by giving up all his possessions ? 


ADA EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY. Book 1X. 


I have now traced to their source social weakness and 
disease. Ihave shown the remedy. I have covered every 
point and met every objection. But the problems that we 
have been considering, great as they are, pass into prob- 
lems greater yet—into the grandest problems with which 
the human mind can grapple. Iam about to ask the reader 
who has gone with me so far, to go with me further, into 
still higher fields. But I ask him to remember that in the 
little space which remains of the limits to which this book 
must be confined, I cannot fully treat the questions which 
arise. I can but suggest some thoughts, which may, per- 
haps, serve as hints for further thought. 


. 
a 


is ONO SS yp DG. 


—_————_—_. 


THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 


CHAPTER I.—THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS—ITS INSUF- 
FICIENCY. : 

CHAPTER II.—DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE. 

CHAPTER III.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 

CHAPTER IV.—HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 

CHAPTER YV.—THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 


19 


What in me is dark 
MWlumine, what is low raise and support; 
That to the hight of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence 


And justify the ways of God to men, 
—NMilton. 


GRC At a iekt-= L. 
THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS—ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 


If the conclusions at which we have arrived are correct, 
they will fall under a larger generalization. 

Let us, therefore, reeommence our inquiry from a higher 
standpoint, whence we may survey a wider field. 


What ts the law of human progress ? 


This is a question which, were it not for what has gone 
before, I should hesitate to review in the brief space I can 
now devote to it, as it involves, directly or indirectly, 
some of the very highest problems with which the human 
mind can engage. But it is a question which naturally 
comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to which we 
have come consistent with the great law under which hu- 
man development goes on? 

What is that law? We must find the answer to our 
question; for the current philosophy, though it clearly rec- 
ognizes the existence of such a law, gives no more 
satisfactory account of it than the current political economy 
does of the persistence of want amid advancing wealth. 

Let us, as far as possible, keep to the firm ground of facts. 
Whether man was or was not gradually developed from an 
animal, it is not necessary to inquire. However intimate 
may be the connection between questions which relate to 
man as we know him and questions which relate to his gen- 
esis, it is only from the former upon the latter that light 
can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed from the un- 
known to the known. It is only from facts of which we 
are cognizant that we can infer what has preceded 
cognizance. 

However man may have originated, all we know of him 


428 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. i a 


is as man—just as he is now to be found. There is no 
record or trace of him in any lower condition than that in 
which savages are still to be met. By whatever bridge he 
may have crossed the wide chasm which now separates him 
from the brutes, there remain of it no vestiges. Between 
the lowest savages of whom we know and the highest ani- 
mals, there is an irreconcilable difference—a difference not 
merely of degree, but of kind. Many of the characteris- 
tics, actions, and emotions of man are exhibited by the 
lower animals; but man, no matter how low in the scale of 
humanity, has never yet been found destitute of one thing of 
which no animal shows the slightest trace, a clearly recog- 
nizable but almost undefinable something, which gives him 
the power of improvement—which makes him the pro- 
gressive animal. 

The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the 
bee a cell; but while beavers’ dams, and birds’ nests, and 
bees’ cells are always constructed on the same model, the 
house of the man passes from the rude hut of leaves and 
branches to the magnificent mansion replete with modern 
conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent connect 
cause and effect, and may be taught some tricks; but his 
capacity in these respects has not been a whit increased 
during all the ages he has been the associate of improving 
man, and the dog of civilization is not a whit more accom- 
plished or intelligent than the dog of the wandering savage. 
We know of no animal that uses clothes, that cooks its 
food, that makes itself tools or weapons, that breeds other 
animals that it wishes to eat, or that has an articulate 
language. But men who do not do such things have never 
yet been found, or heard of, except in fable. That is to 
say, man, wherever we know him, exhibits this power-- 
of supplementing what nature has done for him by what 
he does for himself; and, in fact, so inferior is the physical 
endowment of man, that there is no part of the world, save 
perhaps some of the small islands of the Pacific, where 
without this faculty he could maintain an existence. 

Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty— 


Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY. 429 


everywhere and at all times of which we have any knowl- 
edge, he has made some use of it. But the degree in which 
this has been done greatly varies. Between the rude 
canoe and the steamship; between the boomerang and the 
repeating rifle; between the roughly carved wooden idol 
and the breathing marble of Grecian art; between savage 
knowledge and modern science; between the wild Indian 
and the white settler; between the Hottentot woman and 
the belle of polished society, there is an enormous differ- 
ence. 

The varying degrees in which this faculty is used cannot 
be ascribed to differences in original capacity—the most 
highly improved peoples of the present day were savages 
within historic times, and we meet with the widest differ- 
ences between peoples of the same stock. Nor can they be 
wholly ascribed to differences in physical environment—the 
cradles of learning and the arts are now in many cases 
tenanted by barbarians, and within a few years great cities 
rise on the hunting grounds of wild tribes. All these differ- 
ences are evidently connected with social development. 
Beyond perhaps the veriest rudiments, it only becomes 
possible for man to improve as he lives with his fellows. 
All these improvements, therefore, in man’s powers and con- 
dition we summarize in the term civilization. Menimprove 
as they become civilized, or learn to co-operate in society. 

What is the law of this improvement? By what com- 
mon principle can we explain the different stages of 
civilization at which different communities have arrived? 
In what consists essentially the progress of civilization, so 
that we may say of varying social adjustments, this favors 
it, and that does not; or explain why an institution or con- 
dition which may at one time advance it, may at another 
time retard it? 

The prevailing belief now is, that the progress of civili- 
zation is a development or evolution, in the course of which 
man’s powers are increased and his qualities improved by 
the operation of causes similar to those which are relied 
upon as explaining the genesis of species—viz., the survival 


430 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Poors 


of the fittest and the hereditary transmission of acquired 
qualities. 

That civilization is an evolution—that it is, in the lan- 
guage of Herbert Spencer, a progress from an indefinite, 
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heteroge- 
neity—there is no doubt; but to say thisis not to explain or 
identify the causes which forward or retard it. How far 
the sweeping generalizations of Spencer, which seek to ac- 
count for all phenomena under terms of matter and force, 
may, properly understood, include all these causes, I am 
unable to say; but, as scientifically expounded, the develop- 
ment philosophy has either not yet definitely met this 
question, or has given birth, or rather coherency, to an 
opinion which does not accord with the facts. 

The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very much 
like the view naturally taken by the money maker of the 
causes of the unequal distribution of wealth. His theory, if 
he has one, usually is, that there is plenty of money to be 
made by those who have will and ability, and that it is ignor- 
ance, or idleness, or extravagance, that makes the difference 
between the rich and the poor. And so the common ex- 
planation of differences of civilization is of differences in 
capacity. The civilized races are the superior races, 
and advance in civilization is according to this superi- 
ority—just as English victories were, in common English 
opinion, due to the natural superiority of Englishmen to 
frog-eating Frenchmen; and popular government, active in- 
vention, and greater average comfort are, or were until 
lately, in common American opinion, due to the greater 
“smartness of the Yankee Nation.” 

Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in the 
beginning of this inquiry we met and disproved, harmonize 
with the common opinion of men who see capitalists pay- 
ing wages and competition reducing wages; just as the 
Malthusian theory harmonized with existing prejudices both 
of the rich and the poor; so does the explanation of 
progress as a gradual race improvement harmonize with 
the vulgar opinion which accounts by race differences 


Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY Ol’ THE CURRENT THEORY. 431 


for differences in civilization. It has given coherence 
and a scientific formula to opinions which already prevailed. 
Its wonderful spread since the time Darwin first startled 
the world with his ‘‘ Origin of Species” has not been so 
much a conquest as an assimilation. 

The view which now dominates the world of thought is 
this: That the struggle for existence, just in proportion 
as it becomes intense, impels men to new efforts and 
inventions. That this improvement and capacity for im- 
provement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and ex- 
tended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, 
or most improved individual, to survive and propagate 
among individuals, and of the best adapted, or most im- 
proved tribe, nation, or race to survive in the struggle 
between social aggregates. On this theory the differences 
between man and the animals, and differences in the 
relative progress of men, are now explained as confidently, 
and all but as generally, as a little while ago they were 
explained upon the theory of special creation and divine 
interposition. 

The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of hope- 
ful fatalism, of which current literature is full.* In this 
view, progress is the result of forces which work slowly, 
steadily, and remorselessly, for the elevation of man. War, 
slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and pestilence, the 
want and misery which fester in modern civilization, are 
the impelling causes which drive man on, by eliminating 
poorer types and extending the higher; and hereditary 
transmission is the power by which advances are fixed, and 
past advances made the footing for new advances. The 
individual is the result of changes thus impressed upon and 
perpetuated through a long series of past individuals, and 

* In semi-scientifie or popularized form this may perhaps be seen in best, because 
frankest, expression in ‘‘The Martyrdom of Man,’ by Winwood Reade, a writer of 
singular vividness and power. This book is in reality a history of progress, or, rath- 
er, &@ monograph upon its causes and methods, and will well repay perusal for its 
vivid pictures, whatever may be thought of the capacity of the author for philo- 
sophic generalization. The connection between subject and title may be seen by the 
conclusion: ‘‘I give to universal history a strange but true titlek—T'he Martyrdom of 
Man. In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children might 


profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is 15 
therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come?” 


432 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


the social organization takes its form from the individuals 
of whichitis composed. Thus, while this theory is, as Her- 
bert Spencer says*—“‘‘ radical to a degree beyond anything 
which current radicalism conceives; inasmuch as it looks 
for changes in the very nature of man; it is at the same 
time ‘‘ conservative to a degree beyond anything con- 
ceived by current conservatism,’’ inasmuch as it holds that, 
no change can avail save these slow changes in men’s 
natures. Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen 
the duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the 
theologians who taught predestinarianism insisted on the 
duty of all to struggle for salvation; but, as generally ap- 
prehended, the result is fatalism—‘‘ do what we may, the 
mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our aid or our 
hindrance.” I refer to this only to illustrate what I take 
to be the opinion now rapidly spreading and permeating 
common thought ; not that in the search for truth any re- 
gard for its effects should be permitted to bias the mind. 
But this I take to be the current view of civilization : That 
it is the result of forces, operating in the way indicated, 
which slowly change the character, and improve and ele- 
vate the powers of man; that the difference between 
civilized man and savage is of a long race education, which 
has become permanently fixed in mental organization ; and 
that this improvement tends to go on increasingly, to a 
higher and higher civilization. We have reached such a point 
that progress seems to be natural with us, and we look for- 
ward confidently to the greater achievements of the coming 
race—some even holding that the progress of science will 
finally give men immortality and enable them to make 
bodily the tour not only of the planets, but of the fixed 
stars, and at length to manufacture suns and systems for 
themselves. 

But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this 
theory of progression, which seems so natural to us amid 
an advancing civilization, looks around the world, it comes 
une seaee ease ODM ie AN WEL ne ce mS 


* “The Study of Sociology”—Conclusion. 
¢ Winwood Reade, “The Martyrdom of Man.” 


Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY 433 


against an enormous fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. 
The majority of the human race to-day have no idea of 
progress; the majority of the human race to-day look (as 
until a few generations ago our own ancestors looked) upon 
the past as the time of human perfection. The difference 
between the savage and the civilized man may be explained 
on the theory that the former is as yet so imperfectly de- 
veloped that his progress is hardly apparent; but how, upon: 
the theory that human progress is the result of general and 
continuous causes, shall we account for the civilizations 
that have progressed so far and then stopped? It cannot 
be said of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said 
of the savage, that our superiority is the result of a longer 
education; that we are, asit were, the grown men of nature, 
while they are the children. The Hindoos and the Chinese 
were civilized when we were savages. They had great 
cities, highly organized and powerful governments, litera- 
tures, philosophies, polished manners, considerable divi- 
sion of labor, large commerce, and elaborate arts, when 
our ancestors were wandering barbarians, living in huts and 
skin tents, not a whit further advanced than the American 
Indians. While we have progressed from this savage state 
to Nineteenth Century civilization, they have stood still. 
If progress be the result of fixed laws, inevitable and 
eternal, which impel men forward, how shall we account for 
this ? 

One of the best popular expounders of the development 
philosophy, Walter Bagehot (‘‘ Physics and Politics”) ad- 
mits the force of this objection, and endeavors in this way 
to explain it: That the first thing necessary to civilize man 
is to tame him; to induce him to live in association with 
his fellows in subordination to law; and hence a body or 
‘‘cake” of laws and customs grows up, being intensified 
and extended by natural selection, the tribe or nation thus 
bound together having an advantage over those who are 
not. That this cake of custom and law finally becomes 
too thick and hard to permit further progress, which can 
only go on as circumstances occur which introduce discus- 


4. 
—— 


434 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


sion, and thus permit the freedom and mobility necessary 
to improvement. 

This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he says, 
with some misgivings, is I think at the expense of the 
general theory. But itis not worth while speaking of that, 
for it, manifestly, does not explain the facts. 

The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks 
would show itself at a very early period of development, 
and his illustrations of it are nearly all drawn from savage 
or semi-savage life. Whereas, those arrested civilizations 
had gone a long distance before they stopped. There must 
have been a time when they were very far advanced as 
compared with the savage state, and were yet plastic, free, 
and advancing. ‘These arrested civilizations stopped at a 
point which was hardly in anything inferior and in many 
respects superior to European civilization of, say, the six- 
teenth or at any rate the fifteenth century. Up to that 
point then there must have been discussion, the hailing of 
what was new, and mental activity of all sorts. They had 
architects who carried the art of building, necessarily by a 
series of innovations or improvements, up to a very high 
point; ship-builders who in the same way, by innovation after 
innovation, finally produced as good a vessel as the war 
ships of Henry VIII; inventors who only stopped on the 
verge of our most important improvements, and from some 
of whom we can yet learn; engineers who constructed 
great irrigation works and navigable canals; rival schools 
of philosophy and conflicting ideas of religion. One great 
religion, in many respects resembling Christianity, rose in 
India, displaced the old religion, passed into China, sweep- 
ing over that country, and was displaced again in its old 
seats, just as Christianity was displaced in its first seats. 
There was life, and active life, and the innovation that 
begets improvement, long after men had learned to live to- 
gether. And, moreover, both India and China have received 
the infusion of new life in conquering races, with different 
customs and modes of thought. 

The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations of which 


Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY- 435 


we know anything was that of Egypt, where even art finally 
assumed a conventional and inflexible form. But we know 
that behind this must have been a time of life and vigor— 
a freshly developing and expanding civilization, such as 
ours is now—or the arts and sciences could never have 
been carried to such a pitch. And recent excavations have 
brought to light from beneath what we before knew of 
Egypt an earlier Egypt still—in statues and carvings which, 
instead of a hard and formal type, beam with life and ex- 
pression, which show art struggling, ardent, natural, and 
free, the sure indication of an active and expanding life. 
So it must have been once with all now unprogressive civ- 
ilizations. 

But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that the 
current theory of development fails to account for. It is 
not merely that men have gone so far on the path of pro- 
gress and then stopped; it is that men have gone far on the 
path of progress and then gone back. Itis not merely an 
isolated case that thus confronts the theory—i is the univer- 
sal rule. Every civilization that the world has yet seen has 
had its period of vigorous growth, of arrest and stagnation; 
its decline and fall. Of all the civilizations that have aris- 
en and flourished, there remain to-day but those that have 
been arrested, and our own, which is not yet as old as were 
the pyramids when Abraham looked upon them—while be- 
hind the pyramids were twenty centuries of recorded his- 
tory. 

That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a more 
advanced type, moves quicker and soars higher than any 
preceding civilization is undoubtedly true; but in these 
respects it is hardly more in advance of the Greco-Roman 
civilization than that was in advance of Asiatic civilization; 
and if it were, that would prove nothing as to its perman- 
ence and future advance, unless it be shown that it is supe- 
rior in those things which caused the ultimate failure of its 
predecessors. The current theory does not assume this. 

In truth, nothing could be further from explaining the 
facts of universal history than this theory that civilization 


436 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X 


is the result of a course of natural selection which operates 
to improve and elevate the powers of man. That civiliza- 
tion has arisen at different times in different places and has 
progressed at different rates, is not inconsistent with this 
theory; for that might result from the unequal balancing 
of impelling and resisting forces; but that progress every- 
where commencing (for even among the lowest tribes it is 
held that there has been some progress) has nowhere been 
continuous, but has everywhere been brought to a stand or 
retrogression, is absolutely inconsistent. For if progress 
operated to fix an improvement in man’s nature and thus to 
produce further progress, though there might be occasional 
interruption, yet the general rule would be that progress 
would be continuous—that advance would lead to advance, 
and civilization develope into higher civilization. 

Not merely the general rule, but the universal rule, is the 
reverse of this. The earthis the tomb of the dead empires, 
no less than of dead men. Instead of progress fitting men 
for greater progress, every civilization that was in its 
own time as vigorous.and advancing as ours is now, has of 
itself come to a stop. Over and over again, art has de- 
clined, learning sunk, power waned, population become 
sparse, until the people who had built great temples and 
mighty cities, turned rivers and pierced mountains, cultiva~ 
ted the earth like a garden and introduced the utmost 
refinement into the minute affairs of life, remained but in 
a remnant of squalid barbarians, who had lost even the 
memory of what their ancestors had done, and regarded 
the surviving fragments of their grandeur as the work of 
genil, or of the mighty race before the flood. So true is 
this, that when we think of the past, it seems like the in- 
exorable law, from which we can no more hope to be ex- 
empt than the young man who ‘‘feels his life in every 
limb” can hope to be exempt from the dissolutiqn which 
is the common fate of all. ‘4 Even this, O Rome, must one 
day be thy fate !” wept Scipio over the ruins of Carthage, 
and Macaulay’s picture of the New Zealander musing upon 
the broken arch of London Bridge appeals to the imagina- 


Chap. I. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY. 437 


tion of even those who see cities rising in the wilderness and 
help to lay the foundations of new empire. And so, when 
we erect a public building we make a hollow in the largest 
corner stone and carefully seal within it some mementos 
of our day, looking forward to the time when our works 
shall be ruins and ourselves forgot. 

Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civilization, 
this retrocession that always follows progression, be, or be 
not, the rhythmic movement of an ascending line (and I 
think, though I will not open the question, that it would 
be much more difficult to prove the affirmative than is gen- 
erally supposed) makes no difference; for the current theory 
is in either case disproved. Civilizations have died and 
made no sign, and hard won progress has been lost to the 
race forever; but, even if it be admitted that each wave of 
progress has made possible a higher wave, and each civili- 
zation passed the torch to a greater civilization, the theory 
that civilization advances by changes wrought in the nature 
of man fails to explain the facts; for in every case it is not 
the race that has been educated and hereditarily modified 
by the old civilization that begins the new, but afresh race 
coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of the one 
epoch who have been the civilized men of the next; to be 
in their turn succeeded by fresh barbarians. For it has 
been heretofore always the case that men under the influ- 
ences of civilization, though at first improving, afterwards 
degenerate. The civilized man of to-day is vastly the su- 
perior of the uncivilized; but so in the time of its vigor 
was the civilized man of every dead civilization. But there 
are such things as the vices, the corruptions, the enerva- 
tions of civilization, which past a certain point have always 
heretofore shown themselves. Every civilization that has 
been overwhelmed by barbarians has really perished from 
internal decay. 

This tniversal fact, the moment that it is recognized, 
disposes of the theory that progress is by hereditary trans- 
mission. Looking over the history of the world, the line 
of greatest advance does not coincide for any length of 


438 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


time with any line of heredity. On any particular line of 
heredity, retrocession seems always to follow advance. 

Shall we therefore say that there is a national or race 
life, as there is an individual life—that every social aggre- 
gate has, as it were, a certain amount of energy, the 
expenditure of which necessitates decay? This is an old 
end wide-spread idea, that is yet largely held, and that 
may be constantly seen cropping out incongruously in the 
writings of the expounders of the development philosophy. 
Indeed, I do not see why it may not be stated in terms of 
matter and of motion so as to bring it clearly within the gen- 
eralizations of evolution. For considering its individuals 
as atoms, the growth of society is ‘‘ an integration of mat- 
ter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which 
the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homoge- 
neity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which 
- the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.”* 
And thus an analogy may be drawn between the life of a 
society and the life of a solar system upon the nebular hy- 
pothesis. As the heat and light of the sun are produced 
by the aggregation of atoms evolving motion, which finally 
ceases when the atoms at length come to a state of equili- 
brium or rest, and a state of immobility succeeds, which 
can only be broken in again by the impact of external 
forces, which reverse the process of evolution, integrating 
motion and dissipating matter in the form of gas, again to 
evolve motion by its condensation; so, it may be said, does 
the aggregation of individuals in a community evolve a force 
which produces the light and warmth of civilization, but 
‘when this process ceases and the individual components 
are brought into a state of equilibrium, assuming their fixed 

places, petrification ensues, and the breaking up and diffu- 
- sion caused by an incursion of barbarians is necessary to 
the recommencement of the process and a new growth of 
civilization. 

But analogies are the most dangerous modes of thought. 


* Herbert Spencer’s definition of Evolution, ‘First Principles,” p. 396. rs 


Chap. 2. INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CURRENT THEORY. 439 


They may connect resemblances and yet disguise or cover 
up the truth. And all such analogies are superficial. While 
its nembers are constantly reproduced in all the fresh vigor 
of childhood, a community cannot grow old, as does a man, 
by the decay of its powers. While its aggregate force must 
be the sum of the forces of its individual components, a 
community cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of 
its components are lessened. 

Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life 
power of a nation to that of an individual, and in the one 
I have supposed, lurks the recognition of an obvious truth— 
the truth that the obstacles which finally bring progress to 
a halt are raised by the course of progress; that what has 
destroyed all previous civilizations has been the conditions 
produced by the growth of civilization itself. 

This is a truth which in the current philosophy is ignored; 
but it isa truth most pregnant. Any valid theory of human 
progress must account for it. 


CRDALP- TIE BR “eT: 
DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE. 


In attempting to discover the law of human progress, 
the first step must be to determine the essential nature of 
those differences which we describe as differences in civil- 
ization. 

That the current philosophy, which attributes social 
progress to changes wrought in the nature of man, does 


not accord with historical facts, we have already seen. 


And we may also see, if we consider them, that the 
differences between communities in different stages of 
civilization cannot be ascribed to innate differences in 
the individuals who compose these communities: That 
there are natural differences is true, and that there is 
such a thing as hereditary transmission of peculiarities 
is undoubtedly true; but the great differences between 
men in different states of society cannot be explained 
in this way. The influence of heredity, which it is now 
the fashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared 
with the influences which mould the man after he comes into 
the world. What is more ingrained in habit than lan- 
guage, which becomes not merely an automatic trick of the 
muscles, but the medium of thought? What persists longer, 
or will quicker show nationality? ‘Yet we are not born 
with a predisposition to any language. Our mother tongue 
is only our mother tongue because we learned it in in- 
fancy. Although his ancestors have thought and spoken 
in one language for countless generations, a child who 
hears from the first nothing else, will learn with equal 
facility any other tongue. And so of other national or local 
or class peculiarities. They seem to be matters of educa- 
tion and habit, not of-transmission. Cases of white chil- 


% 


Chap. 11. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION, 441 


dren captured by Indians in infancy and brought up in the 
wigwam show this. They become thorough Indians. And 
80, I believe, with children brought up by Gypsies. 

That this is not so true of the children of Indians or 
other distinctly marked races brought up by whites is, I 
think, due to the fact that they are never treated precisely 
as white children. A gentleman who had taught a colored 
school once told me that he thought the colored children, 
up to the age of ten or twelve, were really brighter and 
learned more readily than white children, but that after 
that age they seemed to get dull and careless. He thought 
this proof of innate race inferiority, and so did I at the 
time. But I afterwards heard a highly intelligent negro 
gentleman (Bishop Hillery) incidentally make a remark 
which to my mind seems a sufficient explanation. He said, 
‘*Our children, when they are young, are fully as bright as 
white children, and learn as readily. But as soon as they 

~get old enough to appreciate their status—to realize that 
they are looked upon as belonging to an inferior race, and 
can never hope to be anything more than cooks, waiters, or 
something of that sort, they lose their ambition and cease 
to keep up.” And to this he might have added, that being 
the children of poor, uncultivated and unambitious par- 
ents, home influences told against them. For, I believe it 
is a matter of common observation that in the primary part 
of education the children of ignorant parents are quite as 
receptive as the children of intelligent parents, but by and 
by the latter, as a general rule, pull ahead and make the 
most intelligent men and women. The reason is plain. As 
to the first simple things which they learn only at school, 
they are on a par, but as their studies become more com-, 
plex, the child who at home is accustomed to good English, 
hears intelligent conversation, has access to books, can 
eet questions answered, etc., has an advantage which tells. 

The same thing may be seen later in hfe. Take a man 
who has raised himself from the ranks of common labor, 
and just as he is brought into contact with men of culture 
and men of affairs, will he become more intelligent and 


41g : THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS Book X. 


polished. Take two brothers, the sons of poor parents, 
brought up in the same home and in the same way. One is 
put to a rude trade, and never gets beyond the necessity of 
making a living by hard daily labor; the other, commencing 
as an errand boy, gets a start in another direction, and 
becomes finally a successful lawyer, merchant, or politician. 
At forty or fifty the contrast betweeen them will be striking, 
and the unreflecting will credit it to the greater natural 
ability which has enabled the one to push himself ahead. 
But just as striking a difference in manners and intelligence 
will be manifest between two sisters, one of whom, married 
to a man who has remained poor, has her hfe fretted with 
petty cares and devoid of opportunities, and the other of 
whom has married a man whose subsequent position brings 
her into cultured society and opens to her opportunities 
which refine taste and expand intelligence. And so deteri- 
orations may be seen. That ‘‘ evil communications corrupt 
good manners” is but an expression of the general law that 
human character is profoundly modified by its conditions 
and surroundings. 

I remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a negro 
man dressed in what was an evident attempt at the hight of 
fashion, but without shoes and stockings. One of the sail- 
ors with whom I was in company, and who had made some 
runs in the slave trade, had a theory that a negro was not 
aman, but a sort of monkey, and pointed to this as evi- 
dence in proof, contending that it was not natural for a 
negro to wear shoes, and that in his wild state he would 
wear no clothes at all. I afterwards learned that it was not 
considered ‘‘the thing’’ there, for slaves to wear shoes, 
just as in England itis not considered the thing for a fault- 
lessly attired butler to wear jewelry (though for that matter 
I have since seen white men at liberty to dress as they 
pleased, get themselves up as incongruously as the Brazil- 
ian slave). But a great many of the facts adduced as show- 
ing hereditary transmission have really no more bearing 
than this of our forecastle Darwinian. 

That, for instance, a large number of criminals and re. 


Chap. LI. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 443 


cipients of public relief in New York have been shown to 
have descended from a pauper three or four generations 
back is extensively cited as showing hereditary transmis- 
sion. But it shows nothing of the kind, inasmuch as an 
adequate explanation of the facts is nearer. Paupers will 
raise paupers, even if the children be not their own, just as 
familiar contact with criminals will make criminals of the 
children of virtuous parents. To learn to rely on charity 
is to necessarily lose the self-respect and independence 
necessary for self-reliance when the struggle is hard. So 
true is this, that, as is well known, charity has the effect of 
increasing the demand for charity, and it is an open ques- 
tion whether public relief and private alms do not in this 
way do far more harm than good. And so of the disposi- 
tion of children to show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, 
or talents as their parents. They imbibe these dispositions 
just as they imbibe from their habitual associates. And 
the exceptions prove the rule, as dislikes or revulsions 
may be excited. 

And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often ac- 
counts for what are looked upon as atavisms of character— 
the same influence that makes the boy who reads dime 
novels want to be a pirate. I once knew a gentleman in 
whose veins ran the blood of Indian chiefs. He used to 
tell me traditions learned from his grandfather, which illus- 
trated what is difficult for a white man to comprehend—the 
Indian habit of thought, the intense but patient blood 
thirst of the trail, and the fortitude of the stake. From 
the way in which he dwelt on these, I have no doubt that 
under certain circumstances, highly educated, civilized man 
that he was, he would have shown traits which would have 
been looked on as due to his Indian blood; but which in 
reality would have been sufficiently explained by the brood- 
ings of his imagination upon the deeds of his ancestors.* 


* Wordsworth has in highly poetical form alluded to this influence: 


Armor rusting in his halls 

On the blood of Clifford calls; 
**Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance; 
‘* Bear me to the hcart of France,” 

Is the longing cf the shield, 


444 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


In any large community we may see, as between different 
classes and groups, differences of the same kind as those 
which exist between communities which we speak of as dif- 
fering in civilization—differences of knowledge, belief, 
customs, tastes, and speech, which in their extremes show 
among people of the same race, living in the same country, 
differences almost as great as those between civilized and 
savage communities. As all stages of social development, 
from the stone age up, are yet to be found in contempora- 
neously existing communities, so in the same country and 
in the same city are to be found, side by side, groups which 
show similar diversities. In such countries as England and 
Germany, children of the same race, born and reared in the 
same place, will grow up, speaking the language differently, 
holding different beliefs, following different customs, and 
showing different tastes; and even in such a country as the 
United States differences of the same kind, though not of 
the same degree, may be seen between different circles or 
groups. 

But these differences are certainly not innate. No child 
is born a Methodist or Catholic, to drop its h’s or to sound 
them. All these differences which distinguish different 
groups or circles are derived from association in these 
circles. 

The Janissaries were made up of youths torn from 
Christian parents at an early age, but they were none the 
less fanatical Moslems and none the less exhibited all the 
Turkish traits; the Jesuits and other orders show distinct 
character, but it is certainly not perpetuated by hereditary 
transmissions; and even such associations as schools or 
regiments, where the components remain but a short time 
and are constantly changing, exhibit general characteristics, 
which are the result of mental impressions perpetuated by 
association. 

Now, it is this body of traditions, beliefs, customs, laws, 
habits, and associations, which arise in every community 
and which surround every individual—this ‘‘ super-organic 
environment” as Herbert Spencer calls it, that, as I take 


Chap. IT. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 445 


it, is the great element in determining national char- 
acter. It is this, rather than hereditary transmission, which 
makes the Englishman differ from the Frenchman, the 
German from the Italian, the American from the Chinaman, 
and the civilized man from the savage man. It is in this 
way that national traits are preserved, extended, or altered. 

Within certain limits (or, if you choose, without limits 
in itself), hereditary transmission may develope or alter 
qualities, but this is much more true of the physical than 
of the mental part of a man, and much more true of ani- 
mals than it is even of the physical part of man. Deduc- 
tions from the breeding of pigeons or cattle will not apply 
to man, and the reason is clear. The life of man, even in 
his rudest state, is infinitely more complex. He is con- 
stantly acted on by an infinitely greater number of 
influences, amid which the relative influence of heredity 
becomes less and less. A race of men with no greater 
mental activity than the animals—men who only ate, drank, 
slept, and propagated—might, I doubt not, by careful treat- 
ment and selection in breeding, be made, in course of time, 
to exhibit as great diversities in bodily shape and charac- 
ter as similar means have produced in the domestic animals. 
But there are no such men; and in men as they are, men- 
tal influences, acting through the mind upon the body, 
would constantly interrupt the process. You cannot fatten 
a man whose mind is on the strain, by cooping him up and 
feeding him, as you would fatten a pig. In all probability 
men have been upon the earth longer than many species of 
animals. They have been separated from each other under 
differences of climate that produce the most marked differ- 
ences in animals, and yet the physical differences between 
the different races of men are hardly greater than the differ. 
ence between white horses and black horses—they are cer- 
tainly nothing like as great as between dogs of the same 
sub-species, as, for instance, the different varieties of the 
terrier or spaniel. And even these physical differences be- 
tween races of men, it is held by those who account for 
them by natural selection and hereditary transmission, 


446 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


were brought out when man was much nearer the animal— 
that is to say, when he had less mind. 

And if this be true of the physical constitution of man, 
in how much higher degree is it true of his mental consti- 
tution? All our physical parts we bring with us into the 
world; but the mind developes afterward. 

There is a stage in the growth of every organism in which 
it cannot be told, except by the environment, whether the 
animal that is to be will be fish or reptile, monkey or man. 
And so with the new-born infant; whether the mind that is 
yet to awake to consciousness and power is to be English 
or German, American or Chinese—the mind of a civilized 
man or the mind of a savage—depends entirely on the social 
environment in which it is placed. 

Take a number of infants born of the most highly civil- 
ized parents and transport them to an uninhabited country. 
Suppose them in some miraculous way to be sustained un- 
til they come of age to take care of themselves, and what 
would you have? More helpless savages than any we know 
of. They would have fire to discover; the rudest tools and 
weapons to invent; language to construct. They would, in 
short, have to stumble their way to the simplest knowledge 
which the lowest races now possess, just as a child learns 
to walk. That they would in time do all these things I 
have not the slightest doubt, for all these possibilities are 
latent in the human mind just as the power of walking is 
latent in the human frame, but I do not believe they would 
do them any better or worse, any slower or quicker, than the 
children of barbarian parents placed in the same conditions. 
Given the very highest mental powers that exceptional in- 
dividuals have ever displayed, and what could mankind be 
if one generation were separated from the next by an inter- 
val of time, as are the seventeen year locusts. One such 
interval would reduce mankind, not to savagery, but to a 
condition compared with which savagery, as we know it, 
would seem civilization. 

And, reversely, suppose a number of savage infants could, 
unknown to the mothers (for even this would be necessary 


Chap. II. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 447 


to make the experiment a fair one), be substituted for as 
many children of civilization, can we suppose that growing 
up they would show any difference? I think no one who 
has mixed much with different peoples and classes will 
think so. The great lesson that is thus learned is that 
‘* human nature is human nature all the world over.” And 
this lesson, too, may be learned in the library. I speak 
not so much of the accounts of travelers, for the accounts 
given of savages by the civilized men who write books are 
very often just such accounts as savages would give of us 
did they make flying visits and then write books; but of 
those mementos of the life and thoughts of other times and 
other peoples, which, translated into our language of to-day, 
are like glimpses of our own lives and gleams of our own 
thought. The feeling they inspire is that of the essential 
similarity of men. ‘‘ This,” says Emanuel Deutsch—‘‘ this 
is the end of all investigation into history or art. They 
were even as we are.” 

There is a people who are to be found in all parts of the 
world who well illustrate what peculiarities are due to 
hereditary transmission and what to transmission by associ- 
ation. The Jews have maintained the purity of their blood 
more scrupulously and for a far longer time than any of the 
European races, yet I am inclined to think that the only 
characteristic that can be attributed to this is that of phys- 
iognomy, and this is in reality far less marked than is con- 
ventionally supposed, as any one who will take the trouble 
may see on observation. Although they have constantly 
married among themselves, the Jews have everywhere been 
modified by their surroundings—the English, Russian, 
Polish, German, and Oriental Jews differing from each 
other in many respects as much as do the other people of 
those countries. Yet they have much in common, and have 
everywhere preserved their individuality. The reason is 
clear. It is the Hebrew religion—and certainly religion is 
not transmitted by generation but by association—which 
has everywhere preserved the distinctiveness of the Hebrew 
race. This religion, which children derive, not as they de- 


448 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


rive their physical characteristics, but by precept and asso- 
ciation, is not merely exclusive in its teachings, but has, by 
engendering suspicion and dislike, produced a powerful 
outside pressure which, even more than its precepts, has 
everywhere constituted of the Jews a community within a 
community. Thus has been built up and maintained a cer- 
tain peculiar environment which gives a distinctive charac- 
ter. Jewish intermarriage has been the effect, not the 
cause of this. What persecution whizh stopped short of 
taking Jewish children from their parents and bringing 
them up outside of this peculiar environment could not ac- 
complish, will be accomplished by the lessening intensity 
of religious belief, as is already evident in the United States, 
where the distinction between Jew and Gentile is fast dis- 
appearing. 

And it seems to me that the influence of this social net 
or environment will explain what is so often taken as proof 
of race differences—the difficulty which less civilized races 
show in receiving higher civilization, and the manner in 
which some of them melt away before it. Just as one so- 
cial environment persists, so does it render it difficult or im- 
possible for those subject to it to accept another. 

The Chinese character is fixed if that of any people is. 
Yet the Chinese in California acquire American modes of 
working, trading, the use of machinery, etc., with such fa- 
cility as to prove that they have no lack of flexibility, or 
natural capacity. That they do not change in other 
respects is due to the Chinese environment that still per- 
sists and still surrounds them. Coming from China, they 
look forward to return to China, and live while here in a 
little China of their own, just as the Englishmen in India 
maintain a little Kngland. It is not merely that we natur- 
ally seek association with those who share our peculiarities, 
and that thus language, religion, and custom tend to per- 
sist where individuals are not absolutely isolated; but that 
these differences provoke an external pressure, which com- 
pels such association. 

These obvious principles fully account for all the pheno 


Chap. I. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 449 


mena which are seen in the meeting of on2 stage or body 
of culture with another, without resort to the theory of in- 
grained differences. or instance, as comparative philol- 
ogy has shown, the Hindoo is of the same race as his Eng- 
lish conqueror, and individual instances have abundantly 
shown that if he could be placed completely and exclu- 
sively in the English environment (which, as before stated, 
could only be thoroughly done by placing infants in Eng- 
lish families in such a way that neither they, as they grow 
up, nor those around them, would be conscious of any dis- 
tinction) one generation would be all required to thoroughly 
implant European civilization, But the progress of English 
ideas and habits in India must necessarily be very slow, 
because they meet there the web of ideas and habits con- 
stantly perpetuated through an immense population, and 
interlaced with every act of life. 

Mr. Bagehot (‘‘ Physics and Politics”) endeavors to ex- 
plain the reason why barbarians waste away before our 
civilization, while they did not before that of the ancients, 
by assuming that the progress of civilization has given us 
tougher physical constitutions. After referring to the fact 
that there is no lament in any classical writer for the bar- 
barians, but that everywhere the barbarian endured the 
contact with the Roman and the Roman allied himself to 
the barbarian, he says (p. 47-8): 


‘‘ Savages in the first year of the Christian era were pretty much 
what they were in the eighteen hundredth; and if they stood the con- 
tact of ancient civilized men and cannot stand ours, it follows that 
our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, 
and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than the ancients carried 
with them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a meter 
to gauge the vigor of the constitution to whose contact he is exposed.”’ 


Mr. Bagehot does not attempt to explain how it is that 
eighteen hundred years ago civilization did not give the 
like relative advantage over barbarism that it does now. 
But there is no use of talking about that, or of the lack of 
proof that the human constitution has been a whit im- 
proved ‘To any one who has seen how the contact of our 
civilization affects the inferior races, a much eae though 
less flattering explanation will occur. 

20 


4.50 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


It is not because our constitutions are naturally tougher 
than those of the savage, that diseases which are compara- 
tively innocuous to us are certain death to him. It is that 
we know and have the means of treating those diseases, while 
he is destitute both of knowledge and means. The same 
diseases with whick the scum of civilization that floats in 
its advance inoculate the savage, would prove as destruc- 
tive to civilized men, if they knew no better than to let 
them run, as hein his ignorance has to let them run; and 
as a matter of fact they were as destructive, until we found 
out how to treat them. And not merely this, but the 
effect of the impingement of civilization upon barbar- 
ism is to weaken the power of the savage without bring- 
ing him into the conditions that give power to the 
civilized man. While his habits and customs still tend 
to persist, and do persist as far as they can, the condi- 
tions to which they were adapted are forcibly changed. He 
is a hunter in a land stripped of game; a warrior deprived 
of his arms and called on to plead in legal technicalities. 
He is not merely placed between cultures, but, as Mr. 
Bagehot says of the European half-breeds in India, he is 
placed between moralities, and learns the vices of civiliza- 
tion without its virtues. He loses his accustomed means 
of subsistence, he loses self-respect, he loses morality; 
he deteriorates and dies away. The miserable creatures 
who may be seen hanging around frontier towns or railroad 
stations, ready to beg, or steal, or solicit a viler commerce, 
are not fair representatives of the Indian before the white 
man had encroached upon his hunting grounds. They 
have lost the strength and virtues of their former state, - 
without gaining those of a higher. In fact, civilization, as 
it pushes the red man, shows no virtues. To the Anglo- 
Saxon of the frontier, as a rule, the aborigine has no rights 
which the white man is bound to respect. He is impover- 
ished, misunderstood, cheated, and abused. He dies out, 
as, under similar conditions, we should die out. He dis- 
appears before civilization as the Romanized Britons dis- 
appeared before Saxon barbarism, 


Chap. IT. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 451 


The true reason why there is no lament in any classic 
writer for the barbarian, but that the Roman civilization 
assimilated instead of destroying, is, I take it, to be found 
not only in the fact that the ancient civilization was much 
nearer akin to the barbarians which it met, but in the more 
important fact that it was not extended as ours has been. 
It was carried forward, not by an advancing line of colo- 
nists, but by conquest which merely reduced the new 
province to general subjection, leaving the social, and gen. 
erally the political organization of the people to a great de- 
eree unimpaired, so that, without shattering or deterioration, 
the process of assimilation went on. In a somewhat similar 
way, the civilization of Japan seems to be now assimilating 
itself to Huropean civilization. 

In America the Anglo-Saxon kas exterminated, instead of 
civilizing, the Indian, simply because he has not brought 
the Indian into his environment, nor yet has the contact 
been in such a way as to induce or permit the Indian web 
of habitual thought and custom to be changed rapidly 
enough to meet the new conditions into which he has been 
brought by the proximity of new and powerful neighbors. 
That there is no innate impediment to the reception of 
our civilization by these uncivilized races has been shown 
over and over again in individual cases. And it has hke- 
wise been shown, so far as the experiments have been per- 
mitted to go, by the Jesuits in Paraguay, the Franciscans 
in California, and the Protestant missionaries on some of 
the Pacific Islands. 

The assumption of physical improvement in the race 
within any time of which we have knowledge is utterly 
without warrant, and within the time of which Mr. Bagehot 
speaks, it is absolutely disproved. We know from classic 
statues, from the burdens carried and the marches made by 
ancient soldiers, from the records of runners and the feats 
of gymnasts, that neither in proportions nor strength has the 
race improved within two thousand years. But the assump- 
tion of mental improvement, which is even more confidently 
and generally made, is still more preposterous. As poets, 


A452 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


artists, architects, philosophers, rhetoricians, statesmen, or 
soldiers, can modern civilization show individuals of greater 
mental power than can the ancient? There is no use in 
recalling names—every school boy knows them. For our 
models and personifications of mental power we go back to 
the ancients. And if we can for a moment imagine the 
possibility of what is held by that oldest and most wide 
spread of all beliefs—that belief which Lessing declared ou 
this account the most probably true, though he accepted 
it on metaphysical grounds—and suppose Homer or Virgil, 
Demosthenes or Cicero, Alexander, Hannibal or Ceesar, 
Plato or Lucretius, Euclid or Aristotle, as re-entering this 
life again in the Nineteenth Century, can we suppose that 
they would show any inferiority to the men of to-day? Or 
if we take any period since the classic age, even the dark- 
est, or any previous period of which we know anything, 
shall we not find men who in the conditions and degree of 
knowledge of their times showed mental power of as high 
an order as men show now? And among the less advanced 
races do we not to-day, whenever our attention is called to 
them, find men who in their conditions exhibit mental 
qualities as great as civilization can show? Did the inven- 
tion of the railroad, coming when it did, prove any greater 
inventive power than did the invention of the wheelbarrow 
when wheelbarrows were not? We of modern civilization 
are raised far above those who have preceded us and those 
of the less advanced races who are our contemporaries. 
But it is because we stand on a pyramid, not that we are 
taller. What the centuries have done for us is not to 
increase our stature, but to build up a structure on which 
we may plant our feet. 

Let ine repeat: I do not mean to say that all men pos- 
sess the same capacities, or are mentally alike, any more 
than I mean to say that they are physically alike. Among 
all the countless millions who have come and gone on this 
earth, there were probably never two who either physically 
or mentally were exact counterparts, Nor yet do I mean 
to say that there are not as clearly marked race differences 


Chap. Il. DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION. 453 


in mind as there are clearly marked race differences in 
body. I do not deny the influence of heredity in trans- 
mitting peculiarities of mind in the same way, and to 
possibly the same degree, as bodily peculiarities are trans- 
mitted. But nevertheless, there is, it seems to me, a 
common standard and natural symmetry of mind, as there is 
of body, towards which all deviations tend to return. The 
conditions under which we fall may produce such distor- 
tions as the Flatheads produce by compressing the heads 
of their infants or the Chinese by binding their daughters’ 
feet. But as Flathead babies continue to be born with 
naturally shaped heads and Chinese babies with naturally 
shaped feet, so does nature seem to revert to the normal 
mental type. A child no more inherits his father’s knowl- 
edge than he inherits his father’s glass eye or artificial leg; 
the child of the most ignorant parents may become a 
pioneer of science or a leader of thought. 

But this is the great fact with which we are concerned: 
That the differences between the people of communities in 
different places and at different times, which we call differ- 
ences of civilization, are not differences which inhere in the 
individuals, but differences which inhere in the society; 
that they are not, as Herbert Spencer holds, differences 
resulting from differences in the units; but that they are 
differences resulting from the conditions under which these 
units are brought in the society. In short, I take the ex- 
planation of the differences which distinguish communities 
to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily 
weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, 
lancuage, tastes, institutions, and laws. Into this web, 
woven by each society (or, rather, into these webs, for 
each community above the simplest 1s made up of minor 
societies, which overlap and interlace each other), the in- 
individual is received at birth and continues until his death. 
This is the matrix in which mind unfolds and from which 
it takes its stamp. This is the way in which customs, and 
religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages, grow 
up and are perpetuated, This is the way that skill is trans- 


454. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


mitted and knowledge is stored up, and the discoveries of 
one time made the common stock aud stepping stone of the 
next. Though it is this that often offers the most serious 
obstacles to progress, it is this that makes progress pos- 
sible. It is this that enables any schoolboy in our time to 
learn in a few hours more of the universe than Ptolemy 
knew; that places the most humdrum scientist far above 
the level reached by the giant mind of Aristotle. This is 
to the race what memory is to the individual. Our won- 
derful arts, our far-reaching science, our marvelous inven- 
tions—they have come through this. 

Human progress goes on as the advances made by one 
generation are in this way secured as the common property 
of the next, and made the starting point for new advances. 


Coe Avtar TET; 
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 


What, then, is the law of human progress—the law une 
der which civilization advances ? 

It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by vague 
generalities or superficial analogies, why, though mankind 
started presumably with the same capacities and at the 
same time, there now exist such wide differences in social 
development. It must account for the arrested civilizations 
and for the decayed and destroyed civilizations; for the gen- 
eral facts as to the rise of civilization, and for the petrifying 
or enervating force which the progress of civilization has 
heretofore always evolved. It must account for retrogres- 
sion as well as for progression; for the differencesin general 
character between Asiatic and European civilizations; for 
the difference between classical and modern civilizations; 
for the different rates at which progress goes on; and for 
those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are 
so marked as minor phenomena And, thus, it must show 
us what are the essential conditions of progress, and what 
social adjustments advance and what retard it. 

Tt is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but 
to look and we may see it. I do not pretend to give it 
scientific precision, but merely to point it out. 

The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in 
human nature—the desire to gratify the wants of the animal 
nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and the wants 
of the sympathetic nature; the desire to be, to know, and to 
do—desires that short of infinity can never be satisfied, 
as they grow by what they feed on. 

Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by 
which each advance is secured and made the vantage 


456 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


eround for new advances. Though he may not by taking 
thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by taking 
thought extend his knowledge of the universe and _ his 
power over it, in what so far as we can see, is an infinite 
degree. The narrow span of human life allows the individ- 
ual to go but a short distance, but though each generation 
may do but little, yet generations succeeding to the gain 
of their predecessors, may gradually elevate the status of 
mankind, as coral polyps, building one generation upon the 
work of the other, gradually elevate themselves from the 
bottom of the sea. | 

Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and 
men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power ex- 
pended in progression—the mental power which is devoted 
to the extension of knowledge, the improvement of meth- 
ods, and the betterment of social conditions. 

Now mental power is a fixed quantity—that is to say, 
there is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, as 
there is to the work he can do with his body; therefore, 
the mental power which can be devoted to progress is only 
what is left after what is required for non-progressive 
purposes. 

These non-progressive purposes in which mental power 
is consumed may be classified as maintenance and conflict. 
By maintenance I mean, not only the support of existence, 
but the keeping up of the social condition and the holding 
of advances already gained. By conflict I mean not 
merely warfare and preparation for warfare, but all expen- 
diture of mental power in seeking the gratification of 
desire at the expense of others, and in resistance to such 
aggression. 

To compare society to-a boat. Her progress through 
the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, 
but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will 
be lessened by any expenditure of force required for bail- 
ing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among them- 
selves, or in pulling in different directions. 

Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man arg 


Chap. 111. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 457 


required to maintain existence, and mental power is only 
set free for higher uses by the association of men in com- 
munities, which permits the division of labor and all the 
economies which come with the co-operation of increased 
numbers, association is the first essential of progress. Im- 
provement becomes possible as men come together in 
peaceful association, and the wider and closer the associa- 
tion, the greater the possibilities of improvement. And as 
the wasteful expenditure of mental power in conflict be- 
comes greater or less as the moral law which accords to 
each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized, 
equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress. 

Thus association in equality is the law of progress. As- 
sociation frees mental power for expenditure in improve- 
ment, and equality (or justice, or freedom—for the terms 
here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral 
law) prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless 
struggles. 

Here is the law of progress, which will explain all diver- 
sities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions. Men tend 
to progress just as they come closer together, and by co- 
operation with each other increase the mental power that 
may be devoted to improvement, but just as conflict is pro- 
voked, or association developes inequality of condition and 
power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, 
and finally reversed. 

Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that 
social development will go on faster or slower, will stop or 
turn back, according to the resistances it meets. In a gen- 
eral way these obstacles to improvement may, in relation to 
the society itself, be classed as external and internal—the 
first operating with greater force in the earlier stages of 
civilization, the latter becoming more important in the later 
stages. 

Man is social in his nature. He does rot require to be 
caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with his 
fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters the 
world, and the long period required for the maturity of 


> 
+ 


458 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


his powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as we 
may observe, is wider, and inits extensions stronger, among 
the ruder than among the more cultivated peoples. The 
first societies are families, expanding into tribes, still hold~ 
ing a mutual blood relationship, and even when they have 
become great nations claiming a common descent. 

Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such 
diversified surface and climate as this, and itis evident that, 
even with equal capacity, and an equal start, social develop- 
ment must be very different. The first limit or resistance to 
association will come from the conditions of physical na- 
ture, and as these greatly vary with locality, corresponding 
differences in social progress must show themselves. The 
net rapidity of increase and the closeness with which men, 
as they increase, can keep together, will, in the rude 
state of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must 
be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, 
very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical confor- 
mation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are 
required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where 
the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous 
man’s puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or 
arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and 
the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go 
but a little ways. But on the rich plains of warm climates, 
where human existence can be maintained with a smaller 
expenditure of force, and from a much smaller area, men 
can keep closer together, and the mental power which can 
at first be devoted to improvement is much greater. Hence 
civilization naturally first arises in the great valleys and 
table lands where we find its earliest monuments. | 

But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely 
thus directly produce diversities in social development, but, 
by producing diversities in social development, bring out in 
man himself an obstacle, or rather an active counterforce, 
to improvement. As families and tribes are separated 
from each other, the social feeling ceases to operate be 
tween them, and differences arise in language, custom, 


Chap. ITI. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 459 


tradition, religion—in short in the whole social web which 
each community, however small or large, constantly spins. 
With these differences, prejudices grow, animosities spring 
up, contact easily produces quarrels, aggression begets ag- 
eression, and wrong kindles revenge.* And so between 
these separate social aggregates arises the feeling of Ish- 
mael and the spirit of Cain, warfare becomes the chronic 
and seemingly natural relation of societies to each other, 
and the powers of men are expended in attack or de- 
fense, in mutual slaughter and mutual destruction of 
wealth, or in warlike preparations. How long this hostil- 
ity persists, the protective tariffs and the standing armies of 
the civilized world to-day bear witness; how difficult it is 
to get over the idea that it is not theft to steal from a for- 
eigner, the difficulty in procuring an international copyright 
act will show. Can we wonder at the perpetual hostilities 
of tribes and clans? Can we wonder that when each com- 
munity was isolated from the others—when each, uninflu- 
enced by the others, was spinning its separate web of social 
environment, which no individual can escape, that war 
should have been the rule and peace the exception? ‘‘ They 
were even as we are.”’ 

Now, warfare is the negation of association. The separa- 
tion of men into diverse tribes, by increasing warfare, thus 
checks improvement; while in the localities where a large 
increase in numbers is possible without much separation, 
civilization gains the advantage of exemption from tribal 
war, even when the community as a whole is carrying on 
warfare beyond its borders. Thus, where the resistance of 
nature to the close association of men is slightest, the 
counterforce of warfare is likely at first to be least felt; and 


* How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike; how natural it is 
for us to consider any difference in manners, customs, religion, etc., as proof of the 
inferiority of those who differ from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any 
degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different classes may see in civilized society. 
In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn— 


‘“‘T’d rather be a Baptist and wear a shining face, 
Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,” 


is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said, ‘‘ Orthodoxy is my 
doxy, and heterodoxy is any othcr doxy,” while the universal tendency is to classify all 
outside of the orthodoxies and hcterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or 
atheists, And the like tendency is observable as to all other differences, 


460 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X 


in the rich plains where civilization first begins, it may rise 
to a great hight while scattered tribes are yet barbarous. 
And thus, when small, separated communities exist in a 
state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, the first 
step to their civilization is the advent of some conquering 
tribe or nation that unites these smaller communities into 
alarger one, in which internal peace is preserved. Where 
this power of peaceable association is broken up, either 
by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance 
ceases and retrogression begins. 

But it is not conquest alone that has operated to promote 
association, and, by liberating mental power from the neces- 
sities of warfare, to promote civilization. If the diversities 
of climate, soil, and configuration of the earth’s surface 
operate at first to separate mankind, they also operate to 
encourage exchange. And commerce, which is in itself a 
form of association or co-operation, operates to promote 
civilization, not only directly, but by building up interests 
which are opposed to warfare, and dispelling the ignorance 
which is the fertile mother of prejudices and animosities. 

And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed 
and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered men 
and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been the 
means of promoting association. A common worship has 
often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and furnished 
the basis of union, while it is from the triumph of Chris- 
tianity over the barbarians of Europe that modern civiliza- 
tion springs. Had not the Christian Church existed when 
the Roman Empire went to pieces, Kurope, destitute of any 
bond of association, might have fallen to a condition not 
much above that of the North American Indians or only 
received civilization with an Asiatic impress from the con- 
quering cimiters of the invading hordes that had_ been 
welded into a mighty power by a religion which, springing 
up in the deserts of Arabia, had united tribes separated 
from time immemorial, and, thence issuing, brought into 
the association of a common faith a great part of the human 
TaCe, 


Chap. LI. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 461 


Looking over what we know of'the history of the world, 
we thus see civilization everywhere springing up where 
men are brought into association, and everywhere dis- 
appearing as this association 1s broken up. ‘Thus the 
Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests 
which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the in- 
cursions of the northern nations that broke society again into 
disconnected fragments; and the progress that now goes on 
in our modern civilization began as the feudal system again 
began to associate men in larger communities, and the spiri- 
tual supremacy of Rome to bring these communities into a 
common relation, as her legions had done before. As the 
feudal bonds grew into national autonomies, and Christi- 
anity worked the amelioration of manners, brought forth 
the knowledge that during the dark days she had hidden, 
bound the threads of peaceful union in her all-pervading 
organization; and taught association in her religious orders, 
a greater progress became possible, which, as men have been 
brought into closer and closer association and co-operation, 
has gone on with greater and greater force. 

But we shall never understand the course of civilization 
and the varied phenomena which its history presents, 
without a consideration of what I may term the internal 
resistances, or counterforces, which arise in the heart of 
advancing society, and which can alone explain bow a 
civilization once fairly started should either come of itself 
to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians. 

The mental power, which is the motor of social progress, 
is set free by association, which is (what, perhaps, it may 
be more properly called) an integration. Society in this 
process becomes more complex; its individuals more de- 
pendent upon each other. Occupations and functions are 
specialized. Instead of wandering, population becomes 
fixed. Instead of each man attempting to supply all of his 
wants, the various trades and industries are separated— 
one man acquires skill in one thing, and another in another 
thing. So, too, of knowledge, the body of which constantly 
tends to become vaster than one man can grasp, and is 


462 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


separated into different parts, which different individuals 
acquire and pursue. So, too, the performance of religious 
ceremonies tends to pass into the hands of a body of men | 
specially devoted to that purpose, and the preservation of 
order, the administration of justice, the assignment of 
public duties and the distribution of awards, the conduct 
of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organ- 
ized government. In short, to use the language in which 
Herbert Spencer has defined evolution, the development 
of society is, in relation to its component individuals, 
the passing from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity 
to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the 
stage of social development, the more society resembles 
one of those lowest of animal organisms, which are without 
organs or limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet 
live. The higher the stage of social development, the more 
society resembles those higher organisms in which functions 
and powers are specialized, and each member is vitally 
dependent on the others. 

Now, this process of integration, of the specialization of 
functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by virtue 
of what is probably one of the deepest laws of human na- 
ture, accompanied by a constant lability to inequality. I 
do not mean that inequality is the necessary result of social 
growth, but that it is the constant tendency of social 
growth, if unaccompanied by changes in social adjustments, 
which, in the new conditions that growth produces, will 
secure equality. I mean, so to speak, that the garment of 
laws, customs, and political institutions, which each society 
weaves for itself, is constantly tending to become too tight 
as the society developes. I mean, so to speak, that man, as 
he advances, threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps 
straight ahead, he will infallibly lose his way, and through 
which reason and justice can alone keep him continuously 
in an ascending path. 

For, while the integration which accompanies growth 
tends in itself to set free mental power to work improve- 
ment, there is, both with increase of numbers and with’ 


Chap. IIL. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 463 


increase in complexity of the social organization, a counter- 
tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality, 
which wastes’ mental power, and, as it increases, brings im- 
provement to a halt. 

To trace to its highest expression the law which thus 
operates to evolve with progress the force which stops 
progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the solution 
of a problem deeper than that of the genesis of the material 
universe—the problem of the genesis of evil. Let me con. 
tent myself with pointing out the manner in which, as 
society developes, there arise tendencies which check de- 
velopment. 

There are two qualities of human nature, which it will 
be well, however, to first call to mind. The one is the 
power of habit—the tendency to continue to do things in 
the same way; the other is the possibility of mental and 
moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social devel- 
opment is to continue habits, customs, laws, and methods, 
long after they have lost their original usefulness, and the 
effect of the other is to permit the growth of institutions 
and modes of thought from which the normal perceptions 
of men instinctively revolt. 

Now, the growth and development of society, not merely 
tend to make each more and more dependent upon all, and 
to lessen the influence of individuals, even over their own 
conditions, as compared with the influence of society; but 
the effect of association or integration is to give rise to a 
collective power which is distinguishable from the sum of 
individual powers. Analogies (or, perhaps, rather illus- 
trations of the same law) may be found in all directions, 
As animal organisms increase in complexity, there arise, 
above the life and power of the parts, a life and power of 
the integrated whole; above the capability of involuntary 
movements, the capability of voluntary movements. The 
actions and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often 
been observed, different from those which, under the same 
circumstances, would be called forth in individuals. The 
fighting qualities of a regiment may be very different from 


464 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. RoseeXi 


those of the individual soldiers. But there is no need of 
illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature and rise of 
rent, we traced the very thing to which I allude. Where 
population is sparse, land has no value; just as men con- 
gregate together, the value of land appears and rises—a 
clearly distinguishable thing from the values produced by 
individual effort; a value which springs from association, 
which increases as association grows greater, and dis- 
appears as association is broken up. And the same thing 
is true of power in other forms than those generally ex- 
pressed in terms of wealth. 

Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue pre- 
vious social adjustments tends to lodge this collective 
power, as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the commu- 
nity; and this unequal distribution of the wealth and power 
gained as society advances, tends to produce greater in- 
equality, since aggression grows by what it feeds on, and 
the idea of justice is blurred by the habitual toleration of 
injustice. 

In this way the patriarchal organization of society can 
easily grow into hereditary monarchy, in which the king is 
as a god on earth, and the masses of the people mere 
slaves of his caprice. It is natural that the father should 
be the directing head of the family, and that at his death 
the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member 
of the little community, should succeed to the headship. 
But to continue this arrangement as the family expands, is 
to lodge power in a particular line, and the power thus 
lodged necessarily continues to increase, as the common 
stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the 
community grows. ‘The head of the family passes into 
the hereditary king, who comes to look upon himself 
and to be looked upon by others as a being of superior 
rights. With the growth of the collective power as com- 
pared with the power of the individual, his power to 
reward and to punish increases, and so increase the induce- 
ments to flatter and to fear him; until finally, if the process be 
not disturbed, a nation grovels at the foot of a throne, anda 


Chap. LIT. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 465 


hundred thousand men toil for fifty years to prepare a tomb 
for one of their own mortal kind. 

So the war-chief of a lttle band of savages is but one of 
their number, whom they follow as their bravest and most 
wary. But when large bodies come to act together, per- 
sonal selection becomes more difficult, a blinder obedience 
becomes necessary and can be enforced, and from the very 
necessities of warfare when conducted on a large scale 
absolute power arises. 

And so of the specialization of function. There is a 
manifest gain in productive power when social growth has 
gone so far that instead of every producer being summoned 
from his work for fighting purposes, a regular military 
force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to the 
concentration of power in the hands of the military class 
or their chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the 
administration of justice, the construction and care of pub- 
lic works, and, notably, the observances of religion, all 
tend in similar manner to pass into the hands of special 
classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their function 
and extend their power. 

But the great cause of inequality is in the natural mo- 
nopoly which is given by the possession of land. The first 
perceptions of men seem always to be that land is common 
property; but the rude devices by which this is at first 
recognized—such as annual partitions or cultivation in 
common—are only consistent with a low stage of develop- 
ment. The idea of property, which naturally arises with 
reference to things of human production, is easily trans- 
ferred to land, and an institution which when population is 
sparse merely secures to the improver and user the due 
reward of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense 
and rent arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. 
Not merely this, but the appropriation of rent for public 
purposes, which is the only way in which, with anything 
like a high development, land can be readily retained as 
common property, becomes, when political and religious 
power passes into the hands of a class, the ownership of 


- 


466 THE LAW’OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


the land by that class, and the rest of the community be- 
come merely tenants. And wars-and conquests, which tend 
to the concentration of political power and to the institu- 
tion of slavery, naturally result, where social growth has 
given land a value, in the appropriation of the soil. A 
dominant class, who concentrate power in their hands, will 
likewise soon concentrate ownership of the land. To 
them will fall large partitions of conquered land, which the 
former inhabitants will till as tenants or serfs, and the pub- 
lic domain, or common lands, whichin the natural course of 
social growth are left for awhile in every country (and 
in which state the primitive system of village culture leaves 
pasture and wood land), are readily acquired, as we see by 
modern instances. And inequality once established, the 
ownership of land tends to concentrate as development 
goes on. 

I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact that 
as a social development goes on, inequality tends to estab- 
lish itself, and not to point out the particular sequence, 
which must necessarily vary with different conditions. But 
this main fact makes intelligible all the phenomena of pet- 
rifaction and retrogression. The unequal distribution of 
the power and wealth gained by the integration of men in 
society tends to check, and finally to counterbalance, the 
force by which improvements are made and society ad- 
vances. On the one side, the masses of the community 
are compelled to expend their mental powers in merely 
maintaining existence. On the other side, mental power is 
expended in keeping up and intensifying the system of in- 
equahty, in ostentation, luxury, and warfare. A community 
divided into a class that rules and a class that is ruled—inte 
the very rich and the very poor, may ‘‘ build like giants 
and finish like jewelers; but it will be monuments of 
ruthless pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned 
from its office of elevating man into an instrument for keep- 
ing him down. Invention may for awhile to some degree 
go on; but it will be the invention of refinements in luxury, 
not the inventions that relieve toil and increase power. In 


Chap. ITT. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 467 


the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court physi- 
cians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden 
as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common 
thought or brighten common life, it will be trodden down 
ag a dangerous innovator. For as it tends to lessen the 
mental power devoted to improvement, so does inequality 
tend to render men averse to improvement. How strong is 
the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes 
who are kept in ignorance by being compelled to toil for a 
mere existence, is too well known to require illustration; 
and on the other hand the conservatism of the classes to 
whom the existing social adjustment gives special advan- 
tages is equally apparent. This tendency to resist 
innovation, even though it be improvement, is observable in 
every special organization—in religion, in law, in medicine, 
in science, in trade guilds; and it becomes intense just as 
the organization is close. A close corporation has always 
an instinctive dislike of innovation and innovators, which 
is but the expression of an instinctive fear that change 
may tend to throw down the barriers which hedge it in 
from the common herd, and so rob it of importance and 
power; and it is always disposed to guard carefully its 
special knowledge or skill. 

It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. The 
advance of inequality necessarily brings improvement to a 
halt, and as it still persists or provokes unavailing reac- 
tions, draws even upon the mental power necessary for 
maintenance, and retrogression begins. 

These principles make intelligible the history of civil- 
ization. 

In the localities where climate, soil, and physical con- 
formation tended least to separate men as they in- 
creased, and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew 
up, the ‘nfluences which arrest progress would naturally 
develope in a more regular and thorough manner, than 
where smaller communities, which in their separation had 
developed diversities, were afterwards brought together 
jnto a closer association. It is this, it seems to me, which 


468 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Boke 


accounts for the general characteristics of the earlier civili- 
zations as compared with the later civilizations of Europe. 
Such homogeneous communities, developing from the first 
without the jar of conflict between different customs, laws, 
religions, etc., would show a much greater uniformity. 
The concentrating and conservative forces would all, so to 
speak, pull together. Rival chieftains would not counter- 
balance each other, nor diversities of belief hold the growth 
of priestly influence in check. Political and religious 
power, wealth and knowledge, would thus tend to concen- 
trate in the same centers. The same causes which tended 
to produce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would 
tend to produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and 
to separate society into castes. The power which asso- 
ciation sets free for progress would thus be wasted, and 
barriers to further progress would be raised. The sur- 
plus energies of the masses wouid be devoted to the con- 
struction of temples, palaces, and pyramids; to ministering 
to the pride and pampering the luxury of their rulers; and 
should any disposition to improvement arise among the 
classes of leisure it would at once be checked by the dread 
of innovation. Society developing in this way must at length 
stop in a conservatism which permits no further progress. 

How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when 
once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon external 
causes, for the iron bonds of the social environment which 
grows up repress disintegrating forces as well as improve- 
ment. Such acommunity can be most easily conquered, for 
the masses of the people are trained to a passive acquiescence 
in a life of hopeless labor. If the conquerors merely take 
the place of the ruling class, as the Hyksos did in Egypt and 
the Tartars in China, everything will go on as before. I 
they ravage and destroy, the glory of palace and temple 
remains but in ruins, population becomes sparse, and 
knowledge and art are lost. 

European civilization differs in character from civiliza- 
tions of the Egyptian type because it springs not from the 
association of a homogeneous people developing from the 


oF 


Chap. 112. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 469 


beginning, or at least for a long time, under the same con- 
ditions, but from the association of peoples who in separa- 
tion had acquired distinctive social characteristics, and 
whose smaller organizations longer prevented the concen- 
tration of power and wealth in one center. The physical 
conformation of the Grecian peninsula is such as to separ- 
ute the people at first into a number of small communities, 
As those petty republics and nominal kingdoms ceased to 
waste their energies in warfare, and the peaceable co- 
nm eration of commerce extended, the light of civilization 
blazed up. But the principle of association was never 
strong enough to save Greece from inter-tribal war, and 
when this was put an end to by conquest, the tendency to 
inequality, which had been combated with various devices 
by Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and 
Grecian valor, art, and literature became things of the past. 
And so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall, of 
Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these two 
principles of association and equality, from the combination 
of which springs progress. 

Springing from the association of the independent hus- 
bandmen and free citizens of Italy and gaining fresh 
strength from conquests which brought hostile nations into 
common relations, the Roman power hushed the world in 
peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking real prog- 
ress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization ex- 
tended. The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the 
homogeneous civilizations where the strong bonds of cus- 
tom and superstition that held the people in subjection, 
probably also protected them, or at any rate kept the peace 
between rulers and ruled; it rotted, declined and fell. 
Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cor 
don of the legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, 
Rome was dead at the heart. Great estates had ruined 
Italy. Inequality had dried up the strength and destroyed 
the vigor of the Roman world. Government became des- 
potism, which even assassination could not temper; 
patriotism became servility; vices the most foul flouted 


é, 
% 


470 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS, Book X. 


themselves in public; literature sank to puerilities; learn- 
ing was forgotten; fertile districts became waste without 
the ravages of war-—everywhere inequality produced decay, 
political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism 
which overwhelmed Rome came not from without, but from 
within. It was the necessary product of the system which 
‘ad substituted slaves and colonii for the independent 
husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates 
of senatorial families. 

Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of 
equality with the growth of association Two great causes 
contributed to this—the splitting up of concentrated power 
into innumerable little centers by the influx of the North- 
ern nations, and the influence of Christianity. Without 
the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow 
decay of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were 
closely married and loss of external power brought no 
relief of internal tyranny. And without the other there 
would have been barbarism, without principle of associa- 
tion or amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords 
who everywhere grasped local sovereignity held each other 
in check. Italian cities recovered their ancient liberty, 
free towns were founded, village communities took root, 
and serfs acquired rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven 
of Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disor. 
ganized and disjointed fabric of society. And although 
society was split up into an innumerable number of sepa- 
rated fragments, yet the idea of closer association was 
always present—it existed in the recollections of a universal 
empire; it existed in the claims of a universal church. 

Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in per- 
colating through a rotting civilization; though pagan gods 
were taken into her pantheon, and pagan forms into her 
ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet her essential 
idea of the equality of men was never wholly destroyed, 
And two things happened of the utmost moment to incipi- 
ent civilization —the establishment of the papacy and the celi- 
bacy of the clergy. The first prevented the spiritual power 


Chap. II. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. 471 


~ 


from concentrating in the same lines as the temporal power; 
and the latter prevented the establishment of a priestly 
caste, during a time when all power tended to hereditary 
form. 

In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce of 
God; in her monastic orders; in her councils which united 
nations, and her edicts which ran without regard to politi- 
cal boundaries; in the low born hands in which she placed 
a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her bishops who 
by consecration became the peers of the greatest nobles; 
in her *‘ Servant of Servants,” for so his official title ran, 
who, by virtue of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed — 
the right to arbitrate between nations, and whose stirrup was 
held by kings; the Church, in spite of everything, was yet 
a promoter of association, a witness for the natural equality 
of men; and by the Church herself was nurtured a spirit 
that, when her early work of association and emancipation 
was well nigh done—when the ties she had knit had become 
strong, and the learning she had preserved had been given — 
to the world—broke the chains with which she would have 
fettered the human mind, and in a great part of Europe 
rent her organization. 

The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast 
and complex a subject to be thrown into proper perspective 
and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its details, as 
in its main features, it illustrates the truth that prog- 
ress goes on just as society tends towards closer association 
and greater equality. Civilization is co-operation. Union 
and liberty are its factors. The great extension of asso- 
ciation—not alone in the growth of larger and denser com- 
munities, but in the increase of commerce and the manifold 
exchanges which knit each community together and link 
them with other though widely separated communities; 
the growth of international and municipal law; the advances 
in security of property and of person, in individual liberty, 
and towards democratic government—advances in short 
towards the recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty. 
and the pursuit of happiness—it is these that make om 


a | 


A779 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


modern civilization so much greater, so much higher, than 
any that has gone before. It is these that have set free the 
mental power which has rolled back the veil of ignorance 
which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men’s 
knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling 
spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of 
water; which has opened to us the ante-chamber of nature’s 
mysteries and read the secrets of a long buried past; which 
has harnessed in our service physical forces beside which 
man’s efforts are puny; and increased productive power by 
a thousand great inventions. 

In that spirit of fatalism to which I have referred as per- 
vading current literature, it is the fashion to speak even of 
war and slavery as means of human progress. But war, 
which is the opposite of associaticn, can only aid progress 
when it prevents further war or breaks down anti-social 
barriers which are themselves passive war. 

As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided 
in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of 
equality, is, from the very rudest state in which man can be 
imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. Auguste 
Comte’s idea that the institution of slavery destroyed can- 
nibalism is as fanciful as Elia’s humorous notion of the way 
mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that a 
propensity that has never been found developed in man 
save as the result of the most unnatural conditions—the 
direst want or the most brutalizing superstitions*—is an 
original impulse, and that he, even in his lowest state the 
highest of all animals, has natural appetites which the 
nobler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery 
began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for im- 
provement. 

Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. 
Whether the community consist of a single master and a 
single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of 


* The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating their bodies. 
Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not touch. The New Zealanders had a no- 
tion that by eating their enemies they acquired their strength and valor. And this 
seems to be the general origin of eating prisoners of war. 


Chap. ILI. THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS, 43 


slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human power; 
for not only is slave labor less productive than free labor, 
but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and 
watching their slaves, and is called away from directions in 
which real improvement lies. From first to last, slavery, 
like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has 
hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion 
as Slavery plays an important part in the social organization, 
does improvement cease. That in the classical world 
slavery was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why 
the mental activity which so polished literature and refined 
art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions 
which distinguish modern civilization. No slave holding 
people ever were an inventive people. Ina slave holding 
community the upper classes may become luxurious and 
polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades the 
laborer and robs him of the fruits of his toil, stifles the 
spirit of invention and forbids the utilization of inventions 
and discoveries even when made. ‘To freedom alone is 
given the spell of power which summons the genii in whose 
keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces 
of the air. 

The law of human progress, what is it but the moral 
law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as 
they acknowledge the equality of right between man and 
man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which 
is bounded only by the equal hberty of every other, must 
civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advanc- 
ing civilization come to a halt and recede. Political econ- 
omy and social science cannot teach any lessons that are not 
embraced in the simple truths that were taught to poor 
fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen hun- 
dred years ago was crucified—the simple truths which, 
beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of 
superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever 
striven to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man. 


21 


CHAPTER IV. 
HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 


The conclusion we have thus reached harmonizes com- 
pletely with our previous conclusions. | 

This consideration of the law of human progress not only 
brings the politico-economic laws which in this inquiry we 
have worked out, within the scope of a higher law—perhaps 
the very highest law our minds can grasp; butit proves that 
the making of land common property in the way I have 
proposed would give an enormous impetus to civilization, 
while the refusal to do so must entail retrogression. A 
civilization lke ours must either advance or go back; it 
cannot stand still. It is not like those homogeneous civili- 
zations, such as that of the Nile Valley, which moulded 
men for their places and put them in it like bricks into a 
pyramid. It much more resembles that civilization whose 
rise and fall is within historic times, and from which it 
sprung. 

There is just now a disposition to scoff at any implica- 
tion that we are not in all respects progressing, and the 
spirit of our times is that of the edict which the flattering 
premier proposed to the Chinese Emperor who burned 
the ancient books—‘‘ that all who may dare to speak to- 
gether about the She and the Shoo be put to death; that 
those who make mention of the past so as to blame the 
present be put to death along with their relatives.” 

Yet it is evident that there have been times of decline, 
just as there have been times of advance; and it is further 
evident that these epochs of decline could not at first have 
been generally recognized. 

He would have been a rash man who, when Augustus was 
changing the Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, when 


Chap. IV HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 476 


wealth was augmenting and magnificence increasing, when 
victorious legions were extending the frontier, when man- 
ners were becoming more refincd, language more polished, 
and literature rising to higher splendors—he would have 
been a rash man who then would have said that Rome was 
entering her decline. Yet such <as the case. 

And whoever will look may sco that though our civiliza- 
tion is apparently advancing with greater rapidity than 
ever, the same cause which turned Roman progress into 
retrogression 1s operating now. 

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been 
the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and 
power. This same tendency, operating with increasing 
force, is observable in our civilization to-day, showing itself 
in every progressive community, and with greater intensity 
the more progressive the community. Wages and inter- 
est tend constantly to fall, rent to rise, the rich to become 
very much richer, the poor to become more helpless and 
hopeless, and the middle class to be swept away. 

I have traced this tendency to its cause. I have shown 
by what simple means this cause may be removed. I now 
wish to point out how, if this is not done, progress must 
turn to decadence, and modern civilization decline to 
barbarism, as have all previous civilizations. It is 
worth while to point out how this may occur, as many 
people, being unable to see how progress may pass inte 
retrogression, conceive such a thing impossible. Gibbon, 
for instance, thought that modern civilization could never 
be destroyed because there remained no barbarians to over: 
run it, and it is a common idea that the invention of 
printing by so multiplying books has prevented the possi- 
bility of knowledge ever again being lost. 

The conditions of social progress, as we have traced the 
law, are association and equality. The gensral tendency of 
modern development, since the time when we can first dis- 
cern the gleams of civilization in the darkness which 
followed the fall of the Western Empire, has been towards 
political and legal equality—to the abolition of slavery; to 


£76 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS, Book X. 


the abrogation of status; to the sweeping away of heredi- 
tary privileges; to the substitution of parliamentary for 
arbitrary government; to the right of private judgment in 
matters of religion; to the more equal security in person 
and preperty of high and low, weak and strong; to the 
greater freedom of movement and occupation, of speech 
and of the press. The history of modern civilization is the 
history of advances in this direction—of the struggles and 
triumphs of personal, political, and religious freedom. And 
the general law is shown by the fact that just as this ten- 
dency has asserted itself civilization has advanced, while 
just as it bas been repressed or forced back civilization has 
been checked. 

This tendency has reached its full expression in the 
American Republic, where political and legal rights are 
absolutely equal, and, owing to the system of rotation in 
office, even the growth of a bureaucracy 1s prevented; where 
every religious belief or non-belief stands on the same 
footing; where every boy may hope to be President, every 
man has an equal voice in public affairs, and every official 
is mediately or immediately dependent for the short lease 
of his place upon a popular vote. This tendency has yet 
some triumphs to win in England, in extending the suffrage, 
and sweeping away the-vestiges of monarchy, aristocracy, 
and prelacy; while in such countries as Germany and 
Russia, where divine right is yet a good deal more than a 
legal fiction, it has a considerable distance togo. But itis 
the prevailing tendency, and how soon Europe will be com- 
pletely republican is only a matter of time, or rather of 
accident. The United States are therefore, in this respect, 
the most advanced of all the great nations, in a direction 
in which all are advancing, and in the United States we 
see just how much this tendency to personal and political 
freedom can of itself accomplish. 

Now, the first effect of the tendency to political equality 
was to the more equal distribution of wealth and power; for, 
while population is comparatively sparse, inequality in the 
distribution of wealth is principally due to the inequality 


Chap. 1V HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. ATT 


of personal rights, and it is only as material progress goes 
on that the tendency to inequality involved in the reduc- 
tion of land to private ownership strongly appears. But it 
is now manifest that absolute political equality does not in 
itself prevent the tendency to inequality involved in the 
private ownership of land, and it is further evident that 
political equality, co-existing with an increasing tendency 
to the unequal distribution of wealth, must ultimately be- 
get either the despotism of organized tyranny or the worse 
despotism of anarchy. 

To turn a republican government into a despotism the 
basest and most brutal, it is not necessary to formally change 
its constitution or abandon popular elections. It was cen- 
turies after Czesar before the absolute master of the Roman 
world pretended to rule other than by authority of a Senate 
that trembled before him. 

But forms are nothing when substance has gone, and 
the forms of popular government are those from which the 
substance of freedom may most easily go. Extremes meet, 
and a government of universal suffrage and theoretical 
equality, may, under conditions which impel the change, 
most readily become a despotism. For there, despotism 
advances in the name and with the might of the people. 
The single source of power once. secured, everything is 
secured. There is no unfranchised class to whom appeal 
may be made, no privileged orders who in defending their 
own rights may defend those of all. No bulwark remuins 
to stay the flood, no eminence to rise above it. They were 
belted barons led by a mitred archbishop who curbed the 
Plantagenet with Magna Charta; it was the middle classes 
who broke the pride of the Stuarts; but a mere aristocracy 
of wealth will never struggle while it can hope to bribe a 
tyrant. 

And when the disparity of condition increases, so does 
universal suffrage make it easy to seize the source of power, 
for the greater is the proportion of power in the hands of 
those who feel no direct interest in the conduct of govern. 
ment; who, tortured by want and embruted by poverty, 


A78 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


are ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder or follow 
the lead of the most blatant demagogue; or who, made 
bitter by hardships, may even look upon profligate and 
tyrannous government with the satisfaction we may imagine 
the proletarians and slaves of Rome to have felt, as they 
saw a Caligula or Nero raging among the rich patricians 
Given a community with republican institutior 3, in which 
one class is too rich to be shorn of their luxuries, no matter - 
how public affairs are administered, and another 30 poor 
that a few dollars on election day will seem more than any 
abstract consideration; in which the few roll in wealth and 
the many seethe with discontent at a condition of things 
they know not how to remedy, and power must pass into 
the hands of jobbers who will buy and sell it as the Pre- 
torians sold the Roman purple, or into the hands of dema- 
eogues who will seize and wield it for a time, only to be 
displaced by worse demagogues. 

Where there is anything lke an equal distribution of 
wealth—that is to say, where there is general patriotism, 
virtue, and intelligence—the more democratic the govern- 
ment the better it will be; but where there is gross in- 
equality in the distribution of wealth, the more democratic 
the government the worse it will be; for, while rotten 
democracy may notin itself be worse than rotten autocracy, 
its effects upon national character will be worse. To give 
the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to men to whom the 
chance to labor is a boon, to men who must beg, or steal, 
or starve, is to invoke destruction. To put political power 
in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty 
is to tie firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the 
standing corn; it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and 
to twine his arms around the pillars of national life. 

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selec- 
tion by lot (the plan of some of the ancient republics) may 
sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in a cor- 
rupt democracy the tendency is always to give power to 
the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted, and un- 
scrupulousness commands success. Tne best gravitate to 


Chap. IV HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 479 


the botiom, the worst float to the top, and the vile will 
only be ousted by the viler. While as national character 
must gradually assimilate to the qualities that win power, 
aud consequently respect, that demoralization of opinion 
goes on which in the long panorama of history we may 
see over and over again transmuting races of freemen into 
races of slaves. 

As in England in the last century, when Parliament wag 
but a close corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt oli- 
garchy clearly fenced off from the masses may exist without 
much effect on national character, because in that case 
power is associated in the popular mind with other things 
than corruption. But where there are no hereditary dis- 
tinctions, and men are habitually seen to raise themselves 
by corrupt qualities from the lowest places to wealth and 
power, tolerance of these qualities finally becomes admira- 
tion. A corrupt democratic government must finally 
corrupt the people, and when a people become corrupt 
there is no resurrection. The life is gone, only the carcass 
remains; and it is left but for the plowshares of fate to 
bury it out of sight. 

Now this transformation of popular government into 
despotism of the vilest and most degrading kind, which 
must inevitably result from the unequal distribution of 
wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It has already 
begun in the United States, and is rapidly going on under 
our eyes. That our legislative bodies are steadily deterior- 
ating in standard; that men of the highest ability and 
character are compelled to eschew politics, and the arts of 
the jobber count for more than the reputation of the states 
man; that voting is done more recklessly and the power of 
money is increasing; that it is harder to arouse the people 
to the necessity of reforms and more difficult to carry them 
out; that political differences are ceasing to be differences 
of principle, and abstract ideas are losing their power; that 
parties are passing into the control of what in general 
government would be oligarchies and dictatorships; are all] 
evidences of political decline, 


480 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X 


The type of modern growth is the great city. Here 
are to be found the greatest wealth and the deepest 
poverty. And it is here that popular government has most 
clearly broken down. In all the great American cities 
there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the 
most aristocratic countries of the world. Its members carry 
wards in their pockets, make up the slates for nominating 
conventions, distribute offices as they bargain together, and 
—though they toil not, neither do they spin—wear the best 
of raiment and spend money lavishly. They are men of 
power, whose favor the ambitious must court and whose 
vengeance he mustavoid. Whoarethesemen? The wise, 
the good, the learned—men who have earned the confidence 
of their fellow-citizens by the purity of their lives, the 
splendor of their talents, their probity in public trusts, 
their deep study of the problems of government? No; 
they are gamblers, saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, 
who have made a trade of controlling votes and of buying 
and selling offices and official acts They stand to the gov- 
ernment of these cities as the Pretorian Guards did to that 
of declining Rome. He who would wear the purple, fill 
the curule chair, or have the fasces carried before him, must 
go or send his messengers to their camps, give them dona- 
tions and make them promises. It is through these men 
that the rich corporations and powerful pecuniary interests 
can pack the Senate and the bench with their creatures. 
It is these men who make School Directors, Supervisors, 
Assessors, members of the Legislature, Congressmen. 
Why, there are many election districts in the United States 
in which a George Washington, a Benjamin Franklin, ora 
Thomas Jefferson could no more go to the lower house of 
a State Legislature than under the Ancient Regime a base» 
born peasant could become a Marshal of France. Their 
very character would be an insuperable disqualification. 

In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to 
sacrifice swine in the temple would hardly have excited 
greater horror and indignation in Jerusalem of old than 
would among us that of conferring a distinction of rank 


Chan, 1V. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 481 


upon-our most eminent citizen. Butis there not growing 
up among us a class who have all the power without any of 
the virtues of aristocracy? We have simple citizens who 
control thousands of miles of railroad, millions of acres of 
land, the means of lvelihood of great numbers of men; 
who name the Governors of sovereign states as they name 
their clerks, choose Senators as they choose attorneys, and 
whose will is as supreme with Legislatures as that of a 
French King sitting in bed of justice. The undercurrents 
of the times seem to sweep us back again to the old condi- 
tions from which we dreamed we had escaped. The devel- 
opment of the artisan and commercial classes gradually 
broke down feudalism after it had become so complete 
that men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, 
and ranked the first and second persons of the Trinity as 
suzerain and tenant-in-chief. But now the development of 
manufactures and exchange, acting in a social organization 
in which land is made private property, threatens to compel 
every worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which fol- 
lowed the final break-up of the Roman Empire compelled 
every freeman to seek a lord. Nothing seems exempt from 
this tendency. Industry everywhere tends to assume a 
form in which one is master and many serve. And when 
one is master and the others serve, the one will control the 
others, even in such matters as votes. Just as the English 
landlord votes his tenants, so does the New England mill- 
owner vote his operatives. 

There is no mistaking it—the very foundations of society 
are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask, how is it 
possible that such a civilization as this, with its railroads, 
and daily newspapers, and electric telegraphs, should ever 
be destroyed? While literature breathes but the belief that 
we have been, are, and for the future must be, leaving the 
savage state further and further behind us, there are indi- 
cations that we are actually turning back again towards 
barbarism. Let me illustrate: One of the character- 
istics of barbarism is the low regard for the rights of 
person and of property. That the laws of our Anglo- 


! 


482 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


Saxon ancestors imposed as penalty for murder a fine pro- 
portioned to the rank of the victim, while our law knows 
no distinction of rank, and protects the lowest from the 
highest, the poorest from the richest, by the uniform pen- 
alty of death, is looked upon as evidence of their barbarism 
and our civilization. And so, that piracy, and robbery, and 
slave-trading, and blackmailing, were once regarded as 
legitimate occupations, is conclusive proof of the rude state 
of development from which we have so far progressed. 

But it is a matter of fact that, in spite of our laws, any 
one who has money enough and wants to kill another may 
go into any one of our great centers of population and 
business, and gratify his desire, and then surrender himself 
to justice, with the chances as a hundred to one that he 
will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary imprison- 
ment and the loss of a sum proportioned partly to his own 
wealth and partly to the wealth and standing of the man 
he kills. His money will be paid, not to the family of the 
murdered man, who have lost their protector; not to the 
state, which has lost a citizen; but to lawyers who under- 
stand how to secure delays, to find witnesses, and get 
juries to disagree. 

And so, if a man steal enough, he may be sure that his 
punishment will practically amount but to the loss of a 
part of the proceeds of his theft; and if he steal enough to 
get off with a fortune, he will be greeted by his acquaint- 
ance as a viking might have been greeted after a successful 
cruise. Even though he robbed those who trusted him; 
even though he robbed the widow and the fatherless; he 
has only to get enough, and he may safely flaunt his wealth 
in the eyes of day. 

Now, the tendency in this direction is an increasing one, 
It is shown in greatest force where the inequalities in the 
distribution of wealth are greatest, and it shows itself as 
they increase. If it be not areturn to barbarism, what is 
it? The failures of justice to which I have referred are only 
illustrative of the increasing debility of our legal machinery 
in every department. It is becoming common to hear men 


Chap. IV. HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 483 


say that it would be better to revert to first principles and 
abolish law, for then in self-defense the people would form 
Vigilance Committees and take justice into their own hands. 
Is this indicative of advance or retrogression ? 

All this is matter of common observation. Though we 
may not speak it openly, the general faith in republican 
institutions is, where they have reached their fullest devel- 
opment, narrowing and weakening. It is no longer that 
confident belief in republicanism as the source of national 
blessings that it once was. Thoughtful men are beginning 
to see its dangers, without seeing how to escape them; are 
beginning to accept the view of Macaulay and distrust that 
of Jefferson.* And the people at large are becoming used 
to the growing corruption. The most ominous political 
sign in the United States to-day is the growth of a senti- 
ment which either doubts the existence of an honest man 
in public office or looks on him as a fool for not seizing 
his opportunities. That is to say, the people themselves 
are becoming corrupted. Thus in the United States to-day 
is republican government running the course it must in- 
evitably follow under conditions which cause the unequal 
distribution of wealth. 

Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think. 
As corruption becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost; as 
traditions of honor, virtue, and patriotism are weakened; as 
law is brought into contempt and reforms become hope- 
less; then in the festering mass will be generated volcanic 
forces, which shatter and rend when seeming accident gives 
them vent. Strong, unscrupulous men, rising up upon 
occasion, will become the exponents of blind popular de- 
sires or fierce popular passions, and dash aside forms that 
have lost their vitality. The sword will again be mightier 
than the pen, and in carnivals of destruction brute force 
and wild frenzy will alternate with the lethargy of a declin- 
ing civilization. 


I speak of the United States only because the United 


* See Macaulay’s letter to Randall, the biographer of Jefferson, 


484 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS Book X 


States is the most advanced of all the great nations. What 
shall we say of Europe, where dams of ancient law and 
custom pen up the swelling waters and standing armies 
weigh down the safety valves, though year by year the fires 
erow hotter underneath? Europe tends to republicanism 
under conditions that will not admit of true republicanism— 
under conditions that substitute for the calm and august 
fizure of Liberty the petroleuse and the guillotine! 

Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through 
the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, even 
now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning perish? 
Men will cease to read, and books will kindle fires and be 
turned into cartridges! 

It is startling to think how slight the traces which would 
be left of our civilization, did it pass through the throes 
which have accompanied the decline of every previous 
civilization. Paper will not last like parchment, nor are 
our most massive buildings and monuments to be compared 
in solidity with the rock-hewn temples and titanic edifices 
of the old civilizations.* And invention has given us, 
not merely the steam engine and the printing press, but 
petroleum, nitro-glycerine, and dynamite. 

Yet to hint, to-day, that our civilization may possibly be 
tending to decline, seems like the wildness of pessimism. 
The special tendencies to which I have alluded are obvious 
to thinking men, but with the majority of thinking men, as 
with the great masses, the belief in substantial progress is 
yet deep and strong—a fundamental belief which admits 
not the shadow of a doubt. 

But any one who will think over the matter will see that 
this must necessarily be the case where advance gradually 
passes into retrogression. For in social development, as in 
everything else, motion tends to persist in straight lines, 
and therefore, where there has been a previous advance, it 
is extremely difficult to recognize decline, even when it has 


* It is also, it seems to me, instructive to note how inadequate and utterly misleading 
would be the idea of our civilization which cou'd be gained from the religious and 
funereal monuments of our time, which are all we have from which to gain our ideag 
ef the buried civilizations, 


Chap. IV. | HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 485 


fully commenced; there is an almost irresistible tendency 
to believe that the forward movement which has been ad- 
vance, and is still going on, is still advance. The web of 
beliefs, customs, laws, institutions, and habits of thought, 
which each community is constantly spinning, and which 
produces in the individual environed by it all the differences 
of national character, is never unraveled. That is to say, 
in the decline of civilization, communities do not go down 
by the same paths that they came up. Yor instance, the 
decline of civilization as manifested in government would not 
take us back from republicanism to constitutional mon- 
archy, and thence to the feudal system; it would take us to 
imperatorship and anarchy. As manifested in religion, it 
would not take us backinto the faiths of our forefathers, into 
Protestantism or Catholicity, but into new forms of super- 
stition, of which possibly Mormonism and Spiritualism may 
give some vague idea. As manifested in knowledge, it would 
not take us toward Bacon, but toward the literati of China. 

And how the retrogression of civilization, following a 
period of advance, may be so gradual as to attract no atten- 
tion at the time; nay, how that decline must necessarily, by 
the great majority of men, be mistaken for advance, is easily 
seen. For instance, there is an enormous difference be- 
tween Grecian art of the classic period and that of the 
lower empire; yet the change was accompanied, or rather 
caused, by a change of taste. The artists who most quickly 
followed this change of taste were in their day regarded as 
the superior artists. And so of literature. As it became 
more vapid, puerile, and stilted, it would be in obedience 
to an altered taste, which would regard its increasing weak- 
ness as increasing strength and beauty. The really good 
writer would not find readers; he would be regarded as 
rude, dry, or dull. And so would the drama decline; not 
because there was a lack of good plays, but because the 
prevailing taste became more and more that of a less cul- 
tured class, who, of course, regard that which they most 
admire as the best of its kind. And so, too. of religion; 
the superstitions which a superstitious people will add to it 


486 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Pook & 


will be regarded by them as improvements. While, as the 
decline goes on, the return to barbarism, where it is not in 
itself regarded as an advance, will seem necessary to meet 
the exigencies of the times. 

For instance, flogging, as a punishment for certain 
offenses, has been recently restored to the penal code of 
England, and has been strongly advocated on this side of 
the Atlantic. I express no opinion as to whether this is or 
is not a better punishment for crime than imprisonment. 
I only point to the fact as illustrating how an increasing 
amount of crime and an increasing embarrassment as to the 
maintenance of prisoners (both obvious tendencies at pres- 
ent) might lead to a fuller return to the physical cruelty of 
barbarous codes. The use of torture in judicial investiga- 
tions, which steadily grew with the decline of Roman civil- 
ization, it is thus easy to see, might, as manners brutalized 
and crime increased, be demanded as a necessary improve- 
ment of the criminal law. 

Whether in the present drifts of opinion and taste there 
are as yet any indications of retrogression, it is not neces- 
sary to inquire; but there are many things about which 
there can be no dispute, which go to show that our civiliza- 
tion has reached a critical period, and that unless a new 
start is made in the direction of social equality, the nine- 
teenth century may to the future mark its climax. These 
industrial depressions, which cause as much waste and 
suffering as famines or wars, are like the twinges and shocks 
which precede paralysis. Everywhere is it evident that the 
tendency to inequality, which is the necessary result of 
material progress where land is monopolized, cannot go 
much further without carrying our civilization into that 
downward path which is so easy to enter and so hard 
to abandon. Everywhere the increasing intensity of the 
struggle to live, the increasing necessity for straining every 
nerve to prevent being thrown down and trodden under foot 
in the scramble for wealth, is draining the forces which 
gain and maintain improvements. In every civilized coun- 
try pauperism, crime, insanity, and suicides are increasing 


chap. IV. | HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. 48% 


In every civilized country the diseases are increasing waich 
come from overstrained nerves, from insufficient novrish- 
ment, from squalid lodgings, from unwholesome and 
monotonous occupations, from premature labor of chil- 
dren, from the tasks and crimes which poverty imposes 
upon women, In eyery highly civilized country the expecs 
tation of life, which gradually rose for several centuries, 
and which seems to have culminated about the first quarter 
of this century, appears to be now diminishing.* 

It is not an advancing civilization that such figures show. 
It is a civilization which in its under-currents has already 
begun to recede. When the tide turns in bay or river from 
flood to ebb, it is not all at once; but here it still runs on, 
though there it has begun to recede. When the sun passes 
the meridian, it can only be told by the way the short 
shadows fall; for the heat of the day yet increases. But as 
sure as the turning tide must soon run full ebb; as sure as the 
declining sun must bring darkness, so sure is it, that though 
knowledge yet increases and invention marches on, and new 
states are being settled, and cities still expand, yet civil- 
zation has begun to wane when, in proportion to popula- 
tion, we must build more and more prisons, more and more 
almshouses, more and more insane asylums. It is not from 
top to bottom that societies die; it is from bottom to top. 

But there are evidences far more palpable than any that 
can be given by statistics, of tendencies to the ebb of civil- 
ization. There is a vague but general feeling of disappoint- 
ment; an increased bitterness among the working classes; 
a widespread feeling of unrest and brooding revolution. If 
this were accompanied by a definite idea of how relief 
is to be obtained, it would be a hopeful sign; but 1t is not. 
Though the schoolmaster has been abroad some time, the 
general power of tracing effect to cause does not seem a 
whit improved. The reaction toward protectionism, as the 
reaction toward other exploded fallacies of government, 


EEE en 


* Statistics which show these things are collected in convenient form in a volume 
entitled ‘‘ Deterioration and Race Education,” by Samuel. Royce, which has been 
largely distributed by the venerable Peter Cooper of New York Strangely enough, 
the only remedy proposed by Mr. Royce is the establishment of Kindergarten schools, 


488 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


shows this.* And even the philosophic free-thinker cannot 
look upon that vast change in religious ideas that is now 
sweeping over the civilized world, without feeling that this 
tremendous fact may have most momentous relations, which 
only the future can develope. For what is going on is not 
a change in the form of religion, but the negation and de- 
struction of the ideas from which religion springs. Chris 
tianity is not simply clearing itself of superstitions, but 
in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the old 
paganisms were dying when Christianity entered the world. 
And nothing arises to take its place. The fundamental 
ideas of an intelligent Creator and of a future life are in the 
general mind rapidly weakening. Now, whether this may 
or may not be in itself an advance, the importance of the 
part which religion has played in the world’s history shows 
the importance of the change that is now going on. Unless 
human nature has suddenly altered in what the universal 
history of the race shows to be its deepest characteristics, 
the mightiest actions and reactions are thus preparing. 
Such stages of thought have heretofore always marked 
periods of transition. On a smaller scale and to a less 
depth (for I think any one who will notice the drift of our 
literature, and talk upon such subjects with the men he 
meets, will see that it is sub-soil and not surface plowing 
that materialistic ideas are now doing), such a state of 
thought preceded the French revolution. But the closest 
parallel to the wreck of religious ideas now going on is to 
be found in that period in which ancient civilization began 
to pass from splendor to decline. What change may come, 
no mortal man can tell, but that some great change must 
come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world 
is trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either it 
must be a leap upward, which will open the way to ad- 
vances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge downward, 
which will carry us back toward barbarism. 


* In point of constructive statesmanship—the recognition of fundamental principles 
and the adaptation of means to ends, the Constitution of the United States, adopted a 
century ago, is greatly superior to the latest State Constitutions, the most recent of 
which is that of California—a piece of utter botchwork, 


CHAPTER V 
THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 


In the short space to which this latter part of our inquiry 
is necessarily confined, I have been obliged to omit much 
that I would like to say, and to touch briefly where an ex- 
haustive consideration would not be out of place. 

Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth to 
which we were led in the politico-economic branch of our 
inquiry, is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall of na- 
tions and the growth and decay of civilizations, and that 
it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of relation 
and sequence that we denominate moral perceptions. Thus 
have been given to our conclusions the greatest certitude 
and highest sanction. 

This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It 
shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal 
distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more 
apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents 
of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to 
a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the con- 
trary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater 
and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by 
the road every previous civilization has trod. But it also 
shows that these evils are not imposed by natural laws; 
that they spring solely from social mal-adjustments which 
ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we 
shall be giving an enormous impetus to progress. 

The poverty which in the midst of abundance, pinches 
~ and embrutes men, and all the manifold evils which flow 
from it, spring from a denial of justice. In permitting 
the monopolization of the natural opportunities which 
nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental] 


490 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


law of justice—for so far as we can see, when we view 
things upon a large scale, justice seems to be the supreme 
law of the universe. But by sweeping away this injustice 
and asserting the rights of all men to natural opportuni- 
ties, we shall conform ourselves to the law—we shall remcve 
the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution 
of wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty; tame the 
ruthless passions of greed; dry up the springs of vice and 
misery; light in dark places the lamp of knowledge; give 
new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse to discovery; 
substitute political strength for political weakness; and 
make tyranny and anarchy impossible. 

The reform I have proposed accords with all that is poli- 
tically, socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of 
a true reform; for it will make all other reforms easier. 
What is it but the carrying out in letter and spirit of the 
truth enunciated in the Declaration of Independence—the 
‘‘self-evident’’ truth that is the heart and soul of the Dec- 
laration—‘‘ That all men are created equal ; that they are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that 
among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!” 

These rights are denied when the equal right to land—on 
which and by which men alone can live—is denied. Equality 
of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the 
equal right to the bounty of nature. Political liberty, 
when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as pop- 
ulation increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty 
to compete for employment at starvation wages. This is 
the truth that we have ignored. And so there come beggars 
in our streets and tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves 
men whom we boast are political sovereigns; and want 
breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten; and 
citizens vote as their masters dictate; and the demagogue 
usurps the part of the statesman; and gold weighs in the 
scales of justice; and in high places sit those who do not 
pay to civic virtue even the compliment of hypocrisy; and 
the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already 
bend under an increasing strain. 


ti ot 


Chap. V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 491 


We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her 
statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully 
trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. 
She will have no half service! 

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear 
in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice 
is the natural law—the law of health and symmetry and 
strength, of fraternity and co-operation. 

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her 
mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges and 
given men the ballot, who think of heras having no further 
relations to the every-day affairs of life, have not seen her 
real grandeur—to them the poets who have sung of her 
must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the 
sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not 
merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth, supply 
all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be a 
cold and inert mass, all the infinite diversities of being 
and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not for an 
abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every 
age the witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the 
martyrs of Liberty have suffered. 

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and virtue, wealth, 
knowledge, invention, national strength and national inde- 
pendence as other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the 
source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to 


virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshineis to — 


erain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. She is the 
genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the 
spirit of national independence. Where Liberty rises, 
there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, 
invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and 
spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul 
amid his brethren—taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, 
there virtue fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgot- 
ten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and 
arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians! 

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of 


492 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS. Book X. 


Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath she 
called forth. 

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egypt- 
ian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage. 
She hardened them in the desert and made of them a race 
of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took their 
thinkers up to hights where they beheld the unity of God, 
and inspired their poets with strains that yet phrase the 
highest exaltations of thought. Liberty dawned on the 
Phenician coast, and ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to 
plow the unknown sea. She sheda partial light on Greece, 
and marble grew to shapes of ideal beauty, words became 
the instruments of subtlest thought, and against the scanty 
militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great King 
broke like surges against a rock. She cast her beams on 
the four-acre farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her 
strength a power came forth that conquered the world. 
They glinted from shields of German warriors, and Augus- 
tus wept his legions. Out of the night that followed her 
eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a 
lost learning revived, modern civilization began, a new 
world was unveiled; and as Liberty grew, so grew art, 
wealth, power, knowledge, and refinement. In the history 
of every nation we may read the same truth. It was the 
strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and Agin- 
court. It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism 
of the Tudors that glorified the Elizabethan age. It was 
the spirit that brought a crowned tyrant to the block that 
planted here the seed of a mighty tree. It was the energy 
of ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity, 
made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to fall 
to the lowest depth of weakness when tyranny succeeded 
liberty. See, in France, all intellectual vigor dying under 
the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century to revive in splendor 
as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth, and on the enfranchise- 
ment of French peasants in the Great Revolution, basing 
the wonderful strength that has in our time defied defeat. 

Shall we not trust her? 


Chap. V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 493 


In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious 
forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On 
the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to 
us again. We must follow her further; we must trust 
her fully. Hither we must wholly accept her or she will 
not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not 
enough that they should be theoretically equal before the 
law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the 
opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal 
terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Hither this, 
or Liberty withdraws her hight! LHither this, or darkness 
comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved 
turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal 
law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its found- 
ations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand. 

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In 
allowing one man to own the land on which and from which 
other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in 
a degree which increases as material progress goes on. 
This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do not realize 
is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the 
fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and 
more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been 
destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of 
political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic in- 
stitutions into anarchy. 

It is this that turns the blessings of material progresg 
into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into 
noisome cellars and squalid tenement houses; that fills 
prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and con- 
sumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace 
and beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little 
children the joy and innocence of life’s morning. 

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws 
of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, 
and the witness that is in every soul answers, that it cannot 
be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something 
more august than Charity—it is Justice herself that de- 


194 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS, Booh: X. 


mands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be 
denied; that cannot be put off—Justice that with the scales 
carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with lturgies 
and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law 
by raising churches when hungry infants moan and weary 
mothers weep? 

Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blas- 
phemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of 
Providence the suffering and brutishness that come of 
poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father 
and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime 
of our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We 
slander the Just One. A merciful man would have better 
ordered the world; a just man would crush with his foot 
such an ulcerous ant-hill! Itis not the Almighty, but we 


_ who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester 


amid our civilization. The Creator showers upon us his 
gifts—more than enough forall. But like swine scrambling 
for food, we tread them in the mire—tread them in the 
mire, while we tear and rend each other ! 

In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want and 
suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not 
close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to the 
Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the prayer 
were heard, and at the behest with which the universe 
sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater 
power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for 
every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, 
and the seed that now increases fifty fold should increase a 
hundred fold! Would poverty be abated or want relieved? 
Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be 
but temporary. The new powers streaming through the 
material universe could only be utilized through land. 
And land, being private property, the classes that now 
monopolize the bounty of the Creator would monopolize all 
the new bounty. Land owners would alone be benefitted. 
Rents would increase, but wages would Btu tend to the 
starvation point ! 


Chap. V. THE CENTRAL TRUTH. 495 


This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is 
a fact of experience. We know it because we have seen it. 
Within our own times, under our very eyes, that Power which 
is above all, and in all, and through all; that Power of which 
the whole universe is but the manifestation; that Power 
which maketh all things, and without which is not anything 
made that is made, has increased the bounty which men 
may enjoy, as truly as though the fertility of nature had been 
increased. Into the mind of one came the thought that 
harnessed steam for the service of mankind. To the inner 
ear of another was whispered the secret that compels the 
lightning to bear a message round the globe. In every 
direction have the laws of matter been revealed; in every 
department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers 
of steel, whose effect upon the production of wealth has 
been precisely the same as an increase in the fertility of 
nature. What has been the result? Simply that land 
owners get all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and in- 
ventions ef our century have neither increased wages nor 
lightened toil. The effect has simply been to make the 
few richer; the many more helpless! 

Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus mis- 
appropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that labor 
should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls in 
wealth—that the many should want while the few are sur- 
feited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read 
the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; that 
the Nemesis that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps! 
Look around to-day. Can this state of things continue? 
May we even say, ‘‘ After us the deluge!” Nay; the pil- 
lars of the state are trembling even now, and the very 
foundations of society begin te quiver with pent-up forces 
that glow underneath. The struggle that must either 
revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not 
already begun. 

The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and 
the new powers born of progress, forces have entered the 
world that will either compel us to a higher plane or 


496 THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS, Book X. 


overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after 
civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the 
delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the pop- 
ular unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly 
pulsing, only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. Be- 
tween democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of 
society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the 
United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising. 
We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them 
to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and girls in 
our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn 
an honest living. We cannot go on prating of the inalien- 
able rights of man and then denying the inalienable 
right to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old 
bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and elemental 
forces gather for the strife ! 

But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and 
obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that 
now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace 
will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers 
now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be 
explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous in- 
ventions of this century give us but a hint. With want 
destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the 
fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the 
jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with 
mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest 
comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the hights to 
which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought ! 
It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high- 
raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious 
vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful 
splendor. It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were 
closedinatrance. It is the culmination of Christianity—the 
City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its 
gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace! 


CONCLUSION. 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 


22 


The days of the nations bear no trace 
Of all the sunshine so far foretold ; 
The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place— 
The age is weary with work and gold, 
And high hopes wither, and memories wane; 
On hearths and altars the fires are dead ; 
But that brave faith hath not lived in vain— 
And this is all that our watcher said. 
—Frances Brown. 


CONCLUSION. 
THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 


My task is done. 

Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we have 
been considering lead into a problem higher and deeper 
still. Behind the problems of social life hes the prob- 
lem of individual life. I have found it impossible to think 
of the one without thinking of the other, and so, I imagine, 
will it be with those who, reading this book, go with me in 
thought. For, as says Guizot, ‘‘ when the history of 
civilization is completed, when there is nothing more to say 
as to our present existence, man inevitably asks himself 
whether all is exhausted, whether he has reached the end 
of all things ?” 

This problem I cannot now discuss. I only speak of it 
because the thought which, while writing this book, has 
come with inexpressible cheer to me, may also be of cheer 
to some who read it; for, whatever be its fate, it will be 
read by some who in their heart of hearts have taken the 
cross of a new crusade. This thought will come to them 
without my suggestion; but we are surer that we see a 
star when we know that others also see it. 


The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find' 
easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been ac- 
cepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have 
been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will 
toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die forit. This is the 
power of Truth. 

Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in our 
own times, or in times of which any memory of us remains, 
who shall say ? 


500 CONCLUSION. 


For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the ignor- 
ance and brutishness caused by unjust social institutions, 
sets himself, in so far as he has strength, to right them, 
there is disappointment and bitterness. So it has been of 
old time. Soisit even now. But the bitterest thought— 
and it sometimes comes to the best and bravest—is that of 
the hopelessness of the effort, the futility of the sacrifice. 
To how few of those who sow the seed is it given to see it 
grow, or even with certainty to know that it will grow. 

Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the 
standard of Truth and Justice been raised in this world. 
Over and over again has it been trampled down—oftentimes 
in blood. If they are weak forces that are opposed to 
Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If Justice has 
but to raise her head to have Injustice flee before her, how 
should the wail of the oppressed so long go up? 

But for those who see Truth and would follow her; for 
those who recognize Justice and would stand for her, suc- 
cess is not the only thing. Success! Why, Falsehood 
has often that to give; and Injustice often has that to give. 
Must not Truth and Justice have something to give that is 
their own by proper right—theirs in essence, and not by 
accident ? 

That they have, and that here and now, every one who 
has felt their exaltation knows. But sometimes the clouds 
sweep down. It is sad, sad reading, the lives of the men 
who would have done something for their fellows. To 
Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus they killed with 
sticks and stones; and One, greatest and purest of all, they 
crucified. These seem but types. To-day Russian prisons 
are full, and in long processions, men and women, who, but 
for high-minded patriotism, might have lived in ease and 
Juxury, move in chains towards the death-in-life of Siberia. 
And in penury and want, in neglect and contempt, desti- 
tute even of the sympathy that would have been so sweet, 
how many in every country have closed their eyes? This 
we see. 

But do we see ut all? 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 501 


In writing Ihave picked up a newspaper. In itis a short 
account, evidently translated from a semi-official report, of 
the execution of three Nihilists at Kieff—the Prussian sub- 
ject Brandtner, the unknown man calling himself Antonoff, 
and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the foot of the gallows 
they were permitted to kiss one another. ‘‘ Then the hang- 
man cut the rope, the surgeons pronounced the victims 
dead, the bodies were buried at the foot of the scaffold, 
and the Nihilists were given up to eternal oblivion.”” Thus 
says the account. I do not believe it. No; not to oblivion! 


I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own 
thought. When, in mind, I set out on it I had no theory 
to support, no conclusions to prove. Only, when I first 
realized the squalid misery of a great city, it appalled and 
tormented me, and would not let me rest, for thinking of 
what caused it and how it could be cured. 

But out of this inquiry has come to me something I did 
not think to find, and a faith that was dead revives. 


The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It 
grows with intellectual growth, and perhaps none really 
feel it more than those who have begun to see how great 
is the universe and how infinite are the vistas which 
every advance in knowledge opens before us—vistas which 
would require nothing short of eternity to explore. Butin 
the mental atmosphere of our times, to the great majority 
of men on whom mere creeds have lost their hold, it seems 
impossible to look on this yearning save as a vain and child- 
ish hope, arising from man’s egotism, and for which there 
is not the slightest ground or warrant, but which, on the 
contrary, seems inconsistent with positive knowledge. 

Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas 
that thus destroy the hope of a future life, we shall find 
them, I think, to have their source, not in any revelations 
of physical science, but in certain teachings of political and 
social science which have deeply permeated thought in all 
directions. They have their root in the doctrines, that 


502 CONCLUSION. 


there is a tendency to the production of more human be- 
ings than can be provided for; that vice and misery are the 
result of natural laws, and the means by which advance 
goes on; and that human progress is by a slow race devel- 
opment. These doctrines, which have been generally 
‘accepted as approved truth, do what (except as scientific 
finterpretations have been colored by them) the exten- 
ions of physical science do not do—they reduce the indi- 
vidual to insignificance; they destroy the idea that there 
can be in the ordering of the universe any regard for his 
existence, or any recognition of what we call moral 
qualities. 

It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immortality 
with the idea that nature wastes men by constantly 
bringing them into being where there is no room for them. 
It is impossible to reconcile the idea of an intelligent and 
beneficent Creator with the belief that the wretchedness 
and degradation which are the lot of such a large proportion 
of human kind result from his enactments; while the idea 
that man mentally and physically is the result of slow 
modifications perpetuated by heredity, irresistibly suggests 
the idea that it is the race life, not the individual life, which 
is the object of human existence. Thus has vanished with 
many of us, and is still vanishing with more of us, that 
belief which in the battles and ills of life affords the 
strongest support and deepest consolation. 

Now, in the inquiry through which we have passed, we 
have met these doctrines and seen their fallacy. We have 
seen that population does not tend to outrun subsistence; 
we have seen that the waste of human powers and the 
prodigality of human suffering do not spring from natural 
laws, but from the ignorance and selfishness of men in 
refusing to conform to natural laws. We have seen that 
human progress is not by altering the nature of men; but 
that, on the contrary, the nature of men seems, generally 
speaking, always the same. 

Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the modern 
world the belief in a future life is destroyed. Not that 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 503 


all difficulties are removed—for turn which way we may, we 
come to what we cannot comprehend; but that difficulties 
are removed which seem conclusive and insuperable. And, 
thus, hope springs up. 

But this is not all. 


Political Economy has been called the dismal science, 
and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But 
this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been de- 
graded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her harmonies 
ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and 
her protest against wrong turned into an indorsement of 
injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her—in her own 
proper symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope. 

For properly understood, the laws which govern the pro- 
duction and distribution of wealth show that the want and 
injustice of the present social state are not necessary; but 
that, on the contrary, a social state is possible in which 
poverty would be unknown, and all the better qualities and 
higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for 
full development. 

And, further than this, when we see that social develop- 
ment is governed neither by a Special Providence nor by a 
merciless fate, but by law, at once unchangeable and benefi- 
cent; when we see that human will is the great factor, and 
that taking men in the aggregate, their condition is as they 
make it; when we see that economic law and moral law are 
essentially one, and that the truth which the intellect 
grasps after toilsome effort, is but that which the moral 
sense reaches by a quick intuition, a flood of light breaks 
in upon the problem of individual life. These countless 
-roillions like ourselves, who on this earth of ours have 
passed and still are passing, with their joys and sorrows, 
their toil and their striving, their aspirations and their fears, 
their strong perceptions of things deeper than sense, their 
common feelings which form the basis even of the most 
divergent creeds—their little lives do not seem so much 
like meaningless waste. 


504 CONCLUSION. 


The great fact which Science in all her branches shows is 
the universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, whether 
in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of binary suns, 
the astronomer sees the working of the same law, which 
operates in the minutest divisions in which we may distin- 
guish space, as it does in the immeasurable distances with 
which his science deals. Out of that which lies beyond his 
telescope comes a moving body and again it disappears. 
So far as he can trace its course the law is ignored. Does 
he say that this is an exception? On the contrary, he says 
that this is merely a part of its orbit that he has seen; that 
beyond the reach of his telescope the law holds good. He 
makes his calculations, and after centuries they are proved. 

Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human life 
in society, we find that in the largest as in the smallest 
community, they are the same. We find that what seem 
at first sight like divergences and exceptions, are but mani- 
festations of the same principles. And we find that 
everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and 
conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a commu- 
nity, justice infallibly brings its reward and injustice its 
punishment. But this we cannot see in individual life. If 
we look merely at individual life we cannot see that the 
laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good or 
bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust.* Shall we then 
say that the law which is manifest in social life is not true 
of individual life? It is not scientific to say so. We would 
not say so in reference to anything else. Shall we not 
rather say this simply proves that we do not see the whole 
of individual life ? 

v 
The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the 


* Let us not delude our children. If for no otherreason than for that which Plato 
gives, that when they come to discard that which we told them as pious fable they will 
also discard that which we told them as truth. The virtues which relate to self do gen- 
erally bring their reward. Either a merchant or a thief will be more successful if he be 
sore prudent, and faithful to his promises; but as to the virtues which do not relate te 
@cli— 

*<Tt seems a story from the world of spirits, 
When any one obtains that which he merits, 
Or any merits that which he obtains.” 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 505 


facts and relations of physical nature, harmonize with what 
seems to be the law of mental development—not a neces- 
sary and involuntary progress, but a progress in which the 
human will is an initiatory force. But in life, as we are 
cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little 
ways. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily 
powers decline—it but becomes dimly conscious of the vast 
fields before it, but begins to learn and use its strength, to 
recognize relations and extend its sympathies, when, with 
the death of the body,.it passes away. Unless there is 
something more, there seems here a break, a failure. 
Whether it be a Humboldt or a Herschel, a Moses who 
looks from Pisgah, a Joshua who leads the host, or one of 
those sweet and patient souls who in narrow circles live 
radiant lives, there seems, if mind and character here 
developed can go no further, a purposelessness incon- 
sistent with what we can see of the linked sequence of the 
universe. 

By a fundamental law of our minds—the law, in fact, 
upon which Political Economy relies in all her deductions— 
we cannot conceive of a means without an end; a contriv- 
ance without an object. Now, to all nature, so far as we 
come in contact with it in this world, the support and em- 
ployment of the intelligence that is in man furnishes such 
an end and object. But unless man himself may rise to or 
bring forth something higher, his existence is unintelligi- 
ble. So strong is this metaphysical necessity that those 
who deny to the individual anything more than this life are 
compelled to transfer the idea of perfectibility to the race. 
But as we have seen (and the argument could have been 
made much more complete) there is nothing whatever ta 
show any essential race improvement. Human progress 
is not the improvement of human nature. The advances 
in which civilization consists are not secured in the consti- 
tution of man, but in the constitution of society. They 
are thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be 
lost—nay, are constantly tending to be lost. And further 
than this, if human life does not continue beyond what we 


506 CONCLUSION, 


see of it here, the we are confronted with regard to the 
race, with the same difficulty as with the individual! For 
it is as certain that the race must die as it is that the indi- 
vidual must die. We know that there have been geologic 
conditions under which human life was impossible on this 
earth. We know that they must return again. Even now, 
as the earth circles on her appointed orbit, the northern 
ice cap slowly thickens, and the time gradually approaches, 
when its glaciers will flow again, and austral seas, sweeping 
northward, bury the seats of present civilization under 
ocean wastes, as it may be they now bury what was once as 
high a civilization as our own. And beyond these periods, 
science discerns a dead earth, an exhausted sun—a time 
when, clashing together, the solar system shall resolve itself 
into a gaseous form, again to begin immeasurable muta- 
tions. 


What then is the meaning of life—of life absolutely and 
inevitably bounded by death? ‘To me it only seems intelli- 
gible as the avenue and vestibule to another life. And its 
facts seem only explainable upon a theory which cannot be 
expressed but in myth and symbol, and which, everywhere 
and at-all times, the myths and symbols in which men have 
tried to portray their deepest perceptions do in some fourm 
express. 

The scriptures of the men who have been and gone—-the 
Bibles, the Zend Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhammapadas, 
and the Korans; the esoteric doctrines of old philosophies, 
the. inner meaning of grotesque religions, the dogmati« 
constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the preachings of 
Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the traditions of 
red Indians, and beliefs of black savages, have a heart and 
core in which they agree—a something which seems like 
the variously distorted apprehensions of a primary truth. 
And out of the chain of thought we have been following 
there seems to vaguely rise a glimpse of what they vaguely 
saw—a shadowy gleam of ultimate relations, the endeavor 
to express which inevitably falls into type and allegory: 


THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE, 507 


A garden in which are set the trees of good and evil. A 
vineyard in which there is the Master’s work to do. A 
passage—from life behind to life beyond. A trial and a 
struggle, of which we cannot see the end. 

Look around to-day. 

Lo! here, now, in our civilized society, the old alle- 
gories yet have a meaning, the oldmythsarestilltrue. Into 
the Valley of the Shadow of Death yet often leads the path 
of duty, through the streets of Vanity Fair walk Christian 
and Faithful, and on Greatheart’s armor ring the clanging 
blows. Ormuzd still fights with Ahriman—the Prince 
of Light with the Powers of Darkness. He who will 
hear, to him the clarions of the battle call. 

How they call, and call, and call, till the heart swells 
that hears them! Strong soul and high endeavor, the 
world needs them now. SBeauty still lies imprisoned, and 
iron wheels go over the good and true and beautiful that 
might spring from human lives. 

And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may not 
know each other--somewhere, sometime, will the muster 
roll be called. 


Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we may 
not see it all. How can we see it all? All that is passing, 
even here, we cannot tell. The vibrations of ’er which 
give the sensations of light and color become to us indis- 
tinguishable when they pass a certain point. It is only 
within a like range that we have cognizance of sounds. 
Even animals have senses which we have not. And, here? 
Compared with the solar system our earth is but an indis- 
tinguishable speck; and the solar system itself shrivels into 
nothingness when gauged with the star depths. Shall 
we say that what passes from our sight passes into oblivion ? 
No; not into oblivion. Far, far beyond our ken the eternal 
laws must hold their sway. 


The hope that rises is the heart of all religions! The 
poets have sung it, the seers have told it, and in its 


508 CONCLUSION. 


deepest pulses the heart of man throbs responsive to its 
truth. This, that Plutarch said, is what in all times and 
in all tongues has been said by the pure-hearted and 
strong-sighted, who standing, as it weré, on the mountain 
tops of thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have 
beheld the loom of land: 


** Men’s souls encompassed here with bodies and passions, 
have no communication with God, except what they can reach 
to in conception only, by means of philosophy, as by a kind of 
an obscure dream. But when they are loosed from the body, 
and removed into the unseen, invisible, impassable, and pure 
region, this God is then their leader and king; they there, as wu 
were, hanging on him wholly, and beholding without weari- 
ness and passionately affecting that beauty which cannot be 
expressed or uttered by men.” 


INDEX. 


Bagehot, Walter, arrest of civilization 
433-434; why barbarians waste away, 449- 
452. 

Bastiat, cause of interest, 158-167. 

Bisset, Andrew, knight’s service, 345n. 

Buckle, assumes current doctrine of wages, 
16; on Malthus, 82-83, 89; interest and 
profits, 141; relation between rent, wages 
and interest, 153. 


Cairnes, J. E., high wages and interest in 
new countries, 18-19. 

California, economic principles exemplified 
in, 17, 55-56, 70, 129-131, 156, 232, 246- 
249, 263-264, 310, 346-348, 354, 359, 392. 

Capital, current doctrine of its relation to 
wages, 15-16; idle in industrial depres- 
sions, 19; theory that wages are drawn 
from, 17-20; deductions from thistheory, 
21-22; varying definitions of, 29-31; diffi- 
culties besetting use of term, 33; exclus- 
ions of term, 33-34; distinguished from 
wealth, 37-42, 64; used in two senses, 50- 
51; definitions of Smith, Ricardo, McCul- 
loch and Mill compared, 37-39; wages not 
drawn from, 20-26, 44-62; does not limit 
industry, 23-26, 51-52, 72-77; does not 
maintain laborers, 63-70; modes in which 
it aids labor, 71, 167-169, 176-177; real 
functions of, 71-78; may limit form 
and productiveness of industry, 72-73; 
apparent want of generally due to 
some other want, 73-76; limited by 
requirements of production, 76-77; pov- 
erty not due to scarcity of, 77; not 
necessary to production, 146-147; a 
form of labor, 147, 179, 183; its essence, 
160-161; spurious, 170-175; not fixed in 
quantity, 176; if the only active factor in 
production, 182-183; its profits as affected 
by wages, 279-280; wastes when not 
used, 282; invested upon possessory 
titles, 348. 

Carey, Henry C., on capital, 31; rent, 205. 

China, cause of poverty and famine, 108; 
civilization, 433-434. 

Civilization, what, 429; prevailing belief as 
to progress of, 429-432; arrest of, 432- 
439; differences in, 440-454; its law, 
455-473; retrogression, 435-439-485-6; to 
endure must be based on justice, 491-494; 
character of European, 468-469, 475. 

Civilization, modern, its riddle, 9; has not 
improved condition of the lowest class, 
255-258; development of, 337-345; supe- 
riority, 470-471; may decline 474-488; 
indications of retrogression, 486-488; its 
possibilities, 408-424, 496. 


Communities, industrial, extent of, 178. 

Confucius, descendants of, 99. 

Consumption, supported by contempora- 
neous production, 65-67; demand for 
determines production, 67-68; only rela: 
tive term, 118-119: increase of shows in- 
creasing production, 133. 

Co-operation, not a remedy for poverty, 
284-287; but will follow from the extir- 
pation of poverty, 408-423. 


Debts, public, not capital, 170-171; origin 
and abolition, 344-345, 409. 

Demand, not fixed, 221, 223-224, (See Sup- 
ply and Demand.) 

Deutsch, Emanuel, human nature, 447. 

Development, concentration the order of, 
294. 

Development Philosophy, relations to Mal- 
thusianism, 89-90; insufficiency of, 427- 
454, 

Discount, high rates of, not interest, 197. 

Distribution, terms of exclusive, 33, 34, 
145; laws of, 137-201; their necessary 
relation, 143-147; as currently taught, 
144; contrasted with true laws, 197: 
equality of, 407. 


Education, no remedy for poverty, 276- 
iis 

Exchange, functions of, 24-26, 68-70; a part 
of production, 42; brings increase, 163- 
164, 167-168; extends with progress of civ 
ilization, 178; promotes civilization, 460. 

Exchanges, credit in, 250-251; effect of 
wages on international, 280. 


Fawcett, Prof., Indian expenditures, 106; 
value of land in England, 260. 

Fawcett, Mrs., laborers maintained by cap- 
ital, 63; land tax, 380. 

Feudal system, recognition of common 
rights to land, 337-339, 344-345: infeuda- 
tion, 358-359. 

Fortunes, great, 174, 175, 349, 407. 

Franklin, Benjamin, his economy, 274. 


Government, improvements in increase 
production, 206, 229; will not relieve pov- 
erty, 270-273; simplification and change 
of character, 408-423; tendency to repub- 
licanism, 476-477; transition to despot- 
ism, 272-273, 477-483. 

Guizot, Europe after fall of Roman Empire, 
337; the question that arises from a re- 
view of civilization, 499. | 


Hyndman, H. M., Indian famine, 106-107. 


510 j INDEX, 


Improvements in the arts, effect upon dis- 
tribution, 220-229; in habits of industry 
and thrift, will not relieve poverty, 273- 
279; upon land, tneir value separable 
from land values, 308-309, 381-382. 


India, cause of poverty and famine, 101- 
108; civilization, 433, 434, 449. 

Industrial depressions, extent and signifi- 
cance, 5-6, 486; conflicting opinions as to 
cause, 10; their cause and course, 237- 
2535 connection with railroad building, 
247-249; passing away, 253. 

Industry, not limited by capital, 23, 51; 
may be limited in form and productive- 
ness by capital, 72-77. 

Interest, confusion of term with profits, 
140-143: proper signification, 145, 155; va- 
riations in, 156; cause of, 156-169; justice 
of, 168; profits mistaken for, 170-175; 
law of, 176- 183; normal point of, 178-9; 
formulation of jaw, 183. 

Interest and Wages, evident connection, 
17-19; relation, 153-154, 179-183, 197; why 
higher in new countries, -199-200. 

Inventions, labor-saving, failure to relieve 
poverty, 3-5; advantage of goes primar- 
ily to labor, 161, 176-177; except when 
not diffused, 228; effect of, 220-229; 
brought forth by freedom, 472-473. 

Ireland, cause of poverty and famine, 110- 
114; effect of introduction of potato, 
275. 


Labor, purpose of, 23-26, 222, 358; meaning 
of term, 33-34; produces wages, 23-26, 
44-62; precedes wages, 50-52; employs 
capital, 146, 176; eliminated from produc- 
tion, 182-3; productiveness varies with 
natural powers, 185; no fixed barriers be- 
tween occupations, 190-191; value of, re- 
duced by value of land, 200-201; supply 
and demand, 243-244; land necessary to, 
245, 265-266; cause of want of employ- 
ment, 246; family, 275-276; combination, 
279-284; only rightful basis of property, 
300-302; efficiency increases with wages, 
398-399; not in itself repugnant, 420. 

Labor and Capital, different forms of same 
thing, 146-147, 179, 183; whence idea of 
their conflict arises, 170, 175; harmony 
of interests, 178-183. 

Laborers, not maintained by capital, 63-70; 
where land is monopolized, have no inter- 
est in increase of productive power, 255; 
made more dependent by civilization, 
255-257; organizations of, 279-284: condi- 
tion not improved by division of land, 
291-294; their enslavement the ultimate 
result of private property in land, 312- 
321. 

Zand, meaning of term, 33; value of is 
not wealth, 35, 148-149; diminishing pro- 
ductiveness cited in support Malthusian 
Theory, 86-87; how far true, 118-119, 
207-219; maintenance of prices, 249; es- 
timated value of in England, 260; effects 
of monopolization in England, 261-262;re- 
lation of man to, 265-266; division of, will 
not relieve poverty, 289-294; tendency to 
concentration in ownership, 289-291; nec- 
essity for abolishing private ownership, 
295-296; injustice oh private property in, 


299-354; absurdity of legal titles to, 307, 
309-311; aristocracy and serfdom spring 
from ownership of, 266, 315-321, 465-466; 
purchase by government, 323- 324; devel- 
opment of private ow nership, 331- 345, 
commons, 339-340; tenures in the United 
States, 346-3545 private ownership incon- 
sistent with best use 357-361; how may 
be made common property, 362- 386; ef- 
fects of this, 389-424; increase of produe- 
tiveness from better distribution of popu- 
lation, 4067. 

Landowners, power of, 150, 265-266, 312- 
321; ease of their combination, 283; their 
claims to compensation, 322-330; will not 
eg injured by confiscation of rent, 402~ 

424. 


Latimer, Hugh. increase of rent in Six- 
teenth Century, 262. 

Laveleye, M. de, on small land holdings, 
293-294; primitive land tenures, 334; Teu- 
tonic equality, 336. 

Lawyers, confusions in their terminology, 
302-303; their inculcation of the sacred- 
ness of property, 331; influence on land 
tenures, 335n. 

Life, quantity of human, 97-98; limits to, 
115-119; reproductive power gives in- 
crease to capital, 162; balance of, 177; 
meaning of, 506. 


Macaulay, English rule in India, 103; 
future of United States, 483. 

Machinery. (See Inventions.) 

McCulloch, on wages fund, 207; definition 
of capital, 30; compared, 37-39; principle 
of increase, 89- 90; Irish poverty and dis- 
tress, 112; ‘rent, 211; tax on rent, 379, 
381-383. 

Malthus, purpose of Essay on Population, 
87; its absurdities, 93-94, 122; his other 
works treated with contempt, "94n; fall of 
wages in Sixteenth Century, 261; cause 
of his popularity, 87-89, 3042. 

Malthusian Theory, stated, examined and 
disproved, 81-134: as stated by Malthus, 
83; as stated by Mill, 84, 125-26; in its 
strongest form 84-85; its triumph and the 
causes, 85-97; harmonizes with ideas of 
working classes, 87; defends inequality 
and discourages reform, 87-88, 125-126; 
304n; its extension in development phil- 
osophy, 89-90; now generally accepted, 
90-1; its illegitimate inferences, 93-124; 
facts which disprove it, 125-134; its sup- 
port from doctrine of rent, 86, 118-119, 
207-208; effects predicated of increase of 
population result from improvements in 
the arts, 220-229; the ultimate defense of 
property in land, 304n. 

Man, more than an animal, 115-117, 119- 
122, 278, 419, 427-429, 445; his power to 
avail himself of the reproductive forces 
of nature, 117; primary rightand power, 
300-301; desire for approbation, 412- 
414; selfishness not the master motive, 
415-416; his infinite desires, 120-121, 
227, 223-224, 419-420, 455; how improves, 
429: idea of. national or race life, 438. 
439; cause of differences and progress, 
440-454; hereditary transmission, 445- 
454; social in his nature, 457-458. 

Mill, John Stuart, definition of capital, 30. 


INDEX. 


64; industry limited by capital, 517, 63; 
Malthusian doctrine, 84, 99; effect of 
unrestricted increase of population, 125- 
126; confusion as to profits and interest, 
142; law of rent, 150; wages, 192; govern- 
ment resumption of increase of land yal- 
ues, 323-325; influence of Malthusianism, 
326-327; tax on rent, 379-380. 

Money, when capital, 40; in hands of con- 
sumer, 412; confounded with wealth, 
54; lack of commodities spoken of as lack 
of, 242. 

Monopolies, profits of, 172-174; cause of 
certain, 369-70. 

More, Sir Thomas, ejectments of cot- 

_ tagers, 262. 

Nature, its reproductive power, 161-163; 
utilization of its variations, 163-164, 
166-168; equation between reproduction 
and destruction, 177; impartiality of, 
301. 

Nicholson, N. A., on capital, 31. 

Nightingale, Florence, causes of famine in 
India, 105, 1067, 107n. 


Perry, Arthur Latham, on capital, 31; rent, 
205. 


Political Economy, its failure, its nature 
and its methods, 10-12; doctrines based 
upon the theory that wages are drawn 
from capital, 21-22; importance of defini- 
tions, 27-82; its terms abstract terms, 43; 
confusion of standard treatises, 50-51, 
141-144, 197; the erroneous standpoint 
which its investigators have adopted, 
145-146 ; its fundamental principle, 11, 
184, 196, 505; writers on, stumbling over 
law of wages, 194-195; compared with as- 
tronomy, 198-199; deals with general 
tendencies, 252-258; admissions in stand- 
ard works as to property in land, 822- 
323; principles not pushed to logical 
conclusions, 380; the Physiocrats, 880- 
381; unison with moral truth, 209, 437; 
its hopefulness, 503; effect on religious 
ideas, 501-502. 

Population and Subsistence, 81-134. (See 
Malthusian Theory.) 

Population, inferences as to increase, 92- 
93; of world, no evidence of increase in, 
95-98 ; present, 1017 ; increase of descend- 
ants not increase of, 100; only limited by 
space, 118-119; real law of increase, 122- 
124; effect of increase upon production 
and distribution, 207-219; increase of 
increases wealth, 125-134; puts land to 
intenser uses, 290; increase in United 
States, 852. 

Poverty, its connection with material prog- 
ress, 6-9; failure to explain this, 10; 
where deepest, 201; why it accompanies 
progress, 254-266; remedy for, 295-296; 
springs from injustice, 305-306, 491; its 
effects, 820, 411-418, 

Price, not measured by the necessity of the 
buyer, 166; equation of equalizes reward 
of labor, 184. 

Production, same principles obvious in 
complex as in simple forms, 2°-26; fac- 
tors of, 33, 145, 183, 245, 265-266; in- | 
cludes exchange, 42; the immediate 
result of labor, 57-60; directed by de- | 


a 


511 


mand for consumption, 67-68; func 
tions of eapital in, 71-78; 146, 147; 
simple modes of sometimes most efli- 
cient, 76; only relative term, 118-119; 
inereased shown by increased con- 
sumption, 133; meaning of the term, 
138-139; utilizes reproductive forces, 
161-163; time an element in, 161-166; the 
modes of, 167; recourse to lower points 
does not involve diminution of, 208-211; 
tendency to large scale, 290-291, 294, 481; 
susceptible of enormous increase, 389- 
401, 420-421, 494. 

Profits, meaning of the term and confu- 
sions in its use, 140-145, 170-175. 

Progress, human, current theory of con- 
sidered, 427-439; in what it consists, 
440-454; its law, 455-473, 489-496; retro- 
gression, 474-488. 

Progress, material, connection with poy- 
erty, 7-10, 201; in what it consists, 206; 
effects upon distribution of wealth, 207- 
229; effect of expectation raised hy, 230- 
234; how it results in industrial depress- 
ions, 237-253; why it produces poverty, 
254-266. 

Property, basis of, 299-302, 307-308; erro- 
neous categories of, 302-303; derivation 
of distinction between real and personal, 
341; private in land not necessary to use 
of land, 357-361; idea of transferred to 
land, 465. 

Protection, its fallacies have their root in 
belief as to wages, 16; effect on agricul- 
turists, 404-406; abolition by England, 
effect of, 229; how protective taxes fall, 
404-405. 


Quesnay, his doctrine, 380-381, 389. 


Rent, bearing upon Maltausian Theory, 
86-87, 118-119, 207-219, 220-229; mean- 
ing of the term, 148; arises from monop- 
oly, 149; law of, 150-152; its corollaries, 
153, 196-197; effect of their recognition, 
154; as related to interest, 182-183; as 
related to wages, 184-195; advance of 
explains why wages and interest do not 
advance, 199-201; increased by increase 
of population, 207-219; increased by 
improvements, 220-229; Sy specula- 
tion, 230-234; speculative advance in, 
the cause of industrial depressions, 
237-253; advance in explains the per- 
sistence of poverty, 254-266; increase 
of not prevented by tenant right, 291- 
292; or by division of land, 293-294; serf, 
generally fixed, 319; confiscation of fu- 
ture increase, 323-325; a continuous 
robbery, 327-328; feudal rents, 337-339; 
their abolition, 342-344; their present val- 
ue, 345; rent now taken by the State, 
859-361; state appropriation of, 362-386, 
465-466; taxes on, 367-386; effects of thus 
appropriating, 389-424, 

Reade, Winwood, Martyrdom of Man, 431, 
432. 

Religion, necessary to socialism, 288; pro- 
motive of civilization, 460-461, 470-471; 
Hebrew, effects on race, 447-448; retro- 
gression in, 485; change going on, 488; 
animosities created by, 4597; consensus 
of, 596. : 


512 


Ricardo, definition of capital, 30; inference 
as to population, 63; enunciation of law of 
rent, 151; narrow view of, 152, 205; tax 
on rent, 379. 

Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and Race 
Education, 4877. 


Slaveholders of the South, their view of 
abolition, 318-319. 

Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial 
effects of, 313-14; modifying influences, 
319-20: not truly abolished in United 
States, 321, 354; never aided progress, 
472-3. 

Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 29, 
32, 37-38, 39, 41; recognizes truth as to 
source of wages and then abandons it, 
45; influence of Malthusian Theory upon, 
82; profits, 140-141; how economists 
have followed him, 142; differences of 
wages in different occupations, 187, 189; 
his failure to appreciate the laws of dis- 
tribution, 194; taxation, 376-378. 

Socialism, its ends and means, 287-9; prac- 
tical realization of its ideal, 388-424. 

Social organization and life, possible 
changes, 408-24, 

Spencer, Herbert, compensation of land 
owners, 323,327; public ownership of 
land, 363; evolution, 430, 438; human 
progress, 482, social differences, 453. 

Strikes, 281-284. 

Subsistence, population and, 81-134; in- 
creases with population, 115-118; cannot 
be exhausted, 119; included in wealth, 
126-127, 221-222; demand for not fixed, 
223-4. (See Malthusian Theory). 

Supply and demand, of labor, 188; relative 
terms, 242; as affected by wages, 279-80. 

Swift, Dean, his Modest Proposal, 112. 


Taxation, eliminated in considering distri- 
bution, 139; reduction of will not relieve 
poverty. 270-272; considered, 367-386; 
canons of, 367; effect upon production, 
367-371; ease and cheapness in collec- 
tion, 372-373; certainty, 373-375; equal- 
ity of, 576-378, opinions on, 379-382; 
objections to tax on rent, 381-386; cause 
of manifold taxation. 384-386; how 
‘taxation falls on agriculturists, 404-406; 
effects of confiscating rent by taxation, 
387-424, 


INDEX. 


Tennant, Rev. Wm., cause of famine ix 
India, 102-103. 

Thornton, Wm., on wage fund, 16n; om 
capital, 31, 


Values, equation of, 177. 


Wages, current doctrine, 15; it coincides 
with vulgar opinion, 16; but is inconsis- 
tent with facts, 16-19; genesis of current 
theory, 19; difference between it and 
that herein advanced, 20-22; not drawn 
from capital but produced by labor, 20, 
22-26, 44-62; meaning of the term, 28- 
29; always subsequent to labor, 50-52; 
fallacy of the assumption that they are 
drawn trom capital, 50-51; for services, 
52-53n; connection between current doc- 
trine and Malthusian Theory, 82-83, 86: 
confusion of terms produced by current 
theory, 142-143; rate of, 184; law of, 
184-195; formulated, 192; in different 
occupatious, 187-191; as quantity and as 
proportion, 195; not increased by ma- 
terial progress, 274-275; minimum fixed 
by standard of comfort, 274; effect of in- 
crease or decrease on employers, 279-280; 
equilibrium of, 281; not increased by 
division of land, 292-294; wl.y they tend 
to wages of slavery, 318; efficiency of 
labor increases with, 398-899. 

Wages and Interest, high or low together, 
17-19; current explanation, 17; Cairne’s 
explanation, 18-19; true explanation, 
page 179-183, 199 200; formulated, 

Oia 

Wages of Superintendence, 142-143; used 
to include profits of monopoly, 172. 

Walker, Amasa, capital, 31. 

Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 16n; capital, 

1 


31. 

Wayland, Professor, definition of capital, 

Wealth, increase of not generally shared, 
8; meaning of term, 34-36; interchange- 
ability of, 43, 126-127, 162-3, 221-224; 
confounded with money, 54; increases 
with population, 126-134; accumulated, 
132-133; laws of distribution, 137-201; 
formulated, 197; nature of, 132-133, 161- 
162, 185; political effects of unequal dis- 
tribution, 272, 477-484; effects of just 
distribution, 305-401, 407, 408-424, 


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